


Shin OK!!!

by G1ll3s



Series: OK! - A Code Geass F1 Series [2]
Category: Code Geass
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Car Racing, Alternate Universe - Formula One, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Racing, Alternate Universe - Sports, Angst, Formula 1, Formula One, Gen, Location Hopping, Motorsports, Racing, Sports, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:09:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/G1ll3s/pseuds/G1ll3s
Summary: Fresh on the back of her most successful season in Grand Prix racing, Kallen Kōzuki is riding high as she returns to Japan, however there is trouble afoot, both at home and in the sport at large. New faces raise questions as to Kallen's past and poke holes into her newfound security, as Lelouch schemes in the background to strike back against Charles. (SEQUEL TO OSHIYOSERU KŌZUKI)
Series: OK! - A Code Geass F1 Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089731
Kudos: 3





	1. Death Is Not The End

**Shin OK Number 1 - Death Is Not The End**

* * *

Dipping just at the bluff, the sun's circumference barely touched the definite edge of view as it descended. The west facing cliff would eat it, and leave them in darkness.

Of course, the final darkness would not be for a while yet; the Isle of Man, in the just-about summer, would take a while to be completely shrouded. It was a trick; this was just one of the many ridges that dotted the landscape, forming cool, shady pockets that mimicked nightfall.

Rolling her shoulders, Kallen made sure to not let any joint, any connection in her system of pivots and ball-bearings come to battle rusty or ill-prepared.

For the next two hours, her entire body would need to be able to do anything and everything Kallen demanded of it in the TT ahead. Suited into her leathers, decked out complete with all of her sponsors, her now iconic number zero stitched onto her right shoulder, and on the other side, smaller stitches, reading GW02 and RC19. She had to keep all of her limbs warmed up, this would be unlike anything else she had ever done. While she had had long practice runs up and down the French hills over the last few months, she had never done anything like this.

"Kallen! It's getting close to go time!"

She looked up and across the grass, over to the tent, and nodded. Running across, she caught a glimpse of her machine, the means through which she would be performing today.

The bike was the same model as the one she had been practicing with, though with a brand-new engine and, more importantly in the context of circumnavigating the Ellan vannin Mannin by its lairy, dangerous roads, a built-to-order gearbox. It retained the two-tone matte black on jet black paint style, with the red detailing that had become so associated with Kallen Kōzuki. Two new tyres, warm enough, medium pressure, and on she leapt, swinging her leg over the bow of the bike, and letting the suspension settle under her weight. Unlike when she was in a car, she now represented a significant percentage of the overall weight of the combined package of vehicle and pilot, which had to be accounted for, however she could use this to her advantage, manoeuvring her body about the machine to shift the distribution of the centre of mass through the corner, though this was only possible with a cooperative chassis.

Once these tests, feeling out the bike before they set off, were completed, Kallen rolled it out from under the feathery roof of her marquee, resting in the paddock with the two tyres resting on one side and her leathered heel on the other, propping up the pair as they looked towards the sky.

While, looking due west at the bluff and, presumably, towards the Irish Sea, the sky had been clear, with no incoming weather fronts visible from Hibernia and beyond into the Atlantic, turning the other way, back towards the British mainland, revealed a rumbling mass of grey out to sea.

She wrinkled her nose. Dark clouds could mean bad news, especially if she was to make a shot at this record. She'd been preparing for this for over three months, in the south facing foothills of the French alps, up and down the border with Spain, and across the breadth of the Scottish Highlands. For it to fall apart now would be a disaster.

Of course, she would be able to try again next year, although the TT was never something you took on lightly, given its dubious history of safety. But as much as she would be in a race with the other competitors, she was in her own race, a race against time.

Keeping his eyes locked on the grey skies beyond, she spoke up to the mechanics in and around the marquee.

"Does it look at all to you like it might rain?"

The question wasn't directed at anyone, instead wafting back meanderingly into the cloth enclosure for anyone to pick up at their leisure. Thankfully, Huang was quick in swiping in to deliver an answer, earnestly poking his head out into the open.

"I don't think it'll come by the start, but we'll factor it into our strategy." he nodded, before shaking his head. "It'd fuck over any shot at the record if it did though, especially as the race goes on. We might still be good for it if we snatch it early into the run."

Kallen nodded, looking back down towards the beasts torso. She snapped up the revs, briefly, tickling its throat, and it roared back with a fierce bark in reciprocity. It didn't have the depths of tone of a bigger motor, but when Kallen watched the tachometer leap up to seventeen thousand revs quicker than she could blink, she didn't mind. It wasn't a baritone roar as much as a countertenor's bark, more rabid and more intense, if not quite backed up with as much muscle or force.

She stroked the beast, calming it back down to idle. Engine and oil temperatures nominal. Tyre pressures nominal. All ready to go.

"Do you want us to record the qualifying session in Belgium for you or?"

Kallen turned back to Huang, who was holding up a remote. Qualifying, yes, for the Grand Prix tomorrow, in Belgium. Circuit de Spa Franchorchamps, one of Naoto's best circuits, just two weeks after he had earned his very first Monaco Grand Prix victory. It had been such an intensely emotional moment, however one race did not a season make. Kallen knew what it took to win a championship, and as they left the south of France to their respective dates with destiny, they each wished each other the best of luck in meeting them.

Turning back to Huang, she shook her head. She trusted Naoto to do her proud.

"No, no, no need for that. It won't be too crazy, it'll either be him or Suzaku. I need to focus now."

Huang, suddenly seeming to realise, nodded, and almost seemed to withdraw back into himself. Kallen chuckled, waving off the point, and he came back out into the paddock. She waved him off, as the man at the starting gate blasted the whistle.

"Tadhg Connolly, number ten, Sakura-Malcal Racing, away. Kallen Kōzuki, number zero, NAC-Lamperouge-Sakura Racing, to the line."

This seemed to shake Huang back into action, as he threw off his momentary anxiety and nodded "Right, we'll see you at the first stop."

Kallen nodded, and briefly spoke before she kicked down the stand and moved to shuffle the bike up towards the start line.

"See ya. Keep the kettle warm for me, shouldn't be too long out. An hour and forty, maybe, two hours tops."

"Oshiyoseru."

With that, Kallen slammed her visor down with the heel of her hand, before moving both of her hands to the handlebars. In neutral, she span up the engine a few times, to keep the innards warm, awaiting the off.

This was it. For the next two hours, there was nothing. As she rolled up to the platform to roll into the start, she took a breath, and died.

"Kōzuki Kallen, number zero, NAC-Lamperouge-Sakura Racing, away."

* * *

_**Nine years earlier.** _

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen, now to my guest tonight. Please, please, quiet down now. My guest tonight, I'm sure will be no stranger to you. She has been behind the wheel racing in some capacity practically permanently since she was barely twelve years old, never able to get enough. That passion took her up the racing ladder, winning in all sorts of junior and teen categories until, last week, she became the Formula One World Champion. She has twelve wins, twenty-seven podiums, and, amazingly, eighteen pole positions out of just forty-seven starts. I am of course talking about our guest tonight, Kallen Kōzuki! Give her a warm welcome ladies and gentlemen!"

Olivier Gerard, stood over the skyline of New York City projected onto the chequered glass forming the back of the stage, stepped back, and allowed his late-night audience to applaud the entrance of the freshly crowned driver's champion, who stepped into the studio fully decked in her nomex overalls, stitched with logos and sponsor decals, waving out to the crowd as she walked across the front of stage and over to the couch opposite where Gerard stood.

Her hands were hidden by her sponsored driving gloves.

"Good evening, good evening, please, make yourself comfortable." he nodded, beckoning her with both arms swept across his torso. She gave a brief bow, before falling into the couch, resting her elbows on her thighs. Gerard nodded, before drumming his outstretched hands against his desks, as if building up some tension as the audience applause quieted down. "So. welcome onto the show."

"Thank you, it's good to be here."

He cleared his throat, and, with surprising volume, the voice being broadcasted out of his jacket mic and into Kallen's ear, feeding back against Gerard's voice as Kallen naturally heard it, beginning the talk proper with "Well, first of all thank you so much for coming on tonight, I can't imagine you've had any rest, is this your first time in New York?"

"Urhhm…." Kallen paused, looking up briefly to absentmindedly ponder whether she had been as far east as New York, before remembering, and piping up "No, no, I had a race up in Watkins Glen a while back, can't… I think it was in an F3 non-championship invitational. But yeah, had a race upstate from here, I think I was maybe fifteen. It's a nice place…"

"Oh really?" Gerard asked, surprised, and yet intensely curious of Kallen's experiences. "What happened in that race?"

Embarrassed, Kallen mumbled "… 'spun, spun out of the double chicane."

This was met with the stock audience laughter, as Kallen chuckled at the memory of fluffing the downchange and blowing the chance of her first win on the American continent.

"So." he began, dramatically tappetting his palms on the desk like a drumroll. "No point beating around the bush."

Kallen rolled her eyes, seeing the question coming. Of course, she was not here apropos of nothing, and the first question on everyone's mind would relate to the events of the previous Sunday.

Grinning, Gerard leaned over and asked "What's it like? You won, after three years. That's got to feel incredible."

After a pause, Kallen shook her head, sighed, and made an attempt at describing it.

"I cannot… kuyashii, there are no words… that I am at least aware of, in English, that are grand enough." Kallen began, before pausing to think. "Jinba Ittai, that is possibly the closest. It is so overwhelming and all encompassing, all of your senses are required at once, every neuron is clinically firing, your body morphs with the car and you approach… completion, there is no distraction. It is like dying. You're just… overwhelmed, with the immense high of going at the very limit of speed, at the very limit of grip, at the very limit of control. The… adrenelin high, it's so intense… and it's like an addiction. You get used to so much adrenelin so intensely and so often… so you… you try and bump it up. You try and go faster, and part of that is going faster than everyone else. That's a… that's a boost, a high in and of itself. The endorphins just rush in. It just reaches a point where it's everything, it is… all of it, all of your mental space, it is the world."

This certainly seemed to satisfy Gerard, as well as the audience, who were now subdued and paying close attention to what she said. Wanting to hurry along, Olivier used this as an emotional trampoline to launch into the next question.

"Well let me congratulate you then. It's quite an achievement, the world championship. Most folks never even get to win a race, let alone a championship, and yet here you are, three years in, and you've already scored a cup, and double digit wins. What's your secret, or are you just that much quicker than everyone else, maybe is there better equipment for you, how do you do this?"

Smirking, Kallen moved her leg to draw attention to it, before slowly extending the balls of her feet down and into the floor, before quipping "Just go faster, flat out."

"Got a heavier right foot?"

"That's the one." Kallen laughed, before nodding. "Yeah, it is great to win the championship but that conversation about… championships isn't the end all be all. Juan Manuel Fangio back in the day won like five championships, maybe if we ever get up to numbers like his we can have a chat about statistics."

This much earned some chuckles from the audience, before Olivier continued "So talk about how you got here. Obviously, we know what you've been up to since 2017, but that can't be where it began. What got you into it, what, what got you looking at everyone whizzing about in funny looking machines and thinking 'That's where I want to be', because for most people, the first thought is more 'That looks really dangerous.' I think a lot of people don't really… they have trouble understanding that. What makes it appealing?"

Kallen frowned. It seemed more of a tautological reality that the sensation of driving was appealing, rather than it deriving from any anterior truth, however she had never put much thought into it.

"That's fair… I don't know…" Kallen stuttered, before speaking from the top of her head by continuing "I guess it's always been that way, since I've grown up, that I've been wired, that I look and get excited, and want to try it, I just happen to… to like it, and to have an avenue to try and get better at it and make a living in it, to… to go fast."

Eyebrows raised in fascination, Olivier asked "How do you know when you push a little more that you're not going to push… too far, and not just push and fall off the edge?"

"Sometimes you fall off the edge." Kallen shrugged. "And you have to accept that."

"And you do accept it?"

"I… don't always like it, but I do accept it." Kallen replied hesitantly, through pursed lips. "And you can get a feel for it, you can judge… if you brake at a certain point, and you get the right steering maybe twenty meters before the exit kerb, you brake twenty meters later next time. And you try, and you brake later and later as you learn. Sometimes you brake too deep but you still make the corner, but it will slow your car on the exit of the corner, so it's a balance."

"Fascinating." Olivier nodded. "So let's get back to talking about you. Obviously you didn't just apparate into existence behind the wheel of a racing car, what was the process like, of trying to work your way through the ranks, how did you grind through all that competition? Only twenty people get to do this you know."

Hard, that was Kallen's first thought. She knew it would be when she started, and it had not disappointed. And all of that, for no guarantee of success. It was a lottery whose entry requirements were nothing short of complete success. So much effort and struggle for a chance. It was what Naoto had warned her; the best of all preparations could earn a single, non-refundable chance. If it was lost, there would be no second chance, no do-over.

But the rewards could be immense.

"No it was not…" Kallen hesitated, trying to find the words. "I mean… it's… what time is it, all the young kids have been put to bed? I won't be a bad influence on them will I?"

Olivier confirmed to her that no delicate ears would be hurt at this hour, before Kallen, briefly suppressing a laugh at the ludicrous premise upon which this entire conversation was proceeding, began to talk about her childhood.

"It's… I wasn't what you'd call academic." she joked. "It certainly wasn't a… boring environment, Naoto was travelling a lot, he cooked stuff in bulk for me to microwave through the week, so I had to look after a lot of things myself, but I didn't spend a lot of time studying... I spent more time growing up at a track than at school, it's been such a trek. Definitely helped me adjust to the culture shock of travelling from country to country, going across the country every week and then across Asia. Naoto definitely helped so much, he was going to the same place a lot of the time, otherwise he was giving me pointers and help."

"And he signed off on you going out and about the place out racing?"

"I mean…" Kallen paused, as she contemplated. It would be wrong to say he had been overjoyed that she was following him, though that, as it turned out, was certainly not borne of any stern paternalism. She expedited this, commenting "I think… he wasn't thrilled, that I wanted to join him, in the circus. I can't blame him, I think he'd have certainly had an easier time, if nothing else, if I… I don't know, if I was wanting to be an accountant, or an office worker, I can get why… he didn't want me to go through a lot of what he went through for the… slight percentage of a chance of a possibility of an opportunity to make it. He knew what it took, he didn't want me to be disappointed."

"Obviously that changed."

"I can be a persistent little shit when I want to be." she smirked. "Thankfully I had a bit of drive and grit, which is what you need, which is what he didn't want me to need and then lack, but no, as soon as I said that that was what I wanted to do, that I'd thought about it, that I'd made the decision with the right amount of thinking and processing and consideration, he was ready to go and say 'Alright. You've decided, now I'm going to help as much as I can.' That was really great, that, as soon as I answered if I was sure, he was onboard, I think it's a good way to be. He wasn't restrictive, he just didn't want me to make a mistake."

"That's got to be nice." Olivier nodded. "So you put in all that work, all those years… and then you get your shot… Japan 2017… that's two years ago now, win your first races at Britain and Singapore, you take it to the wire in 2018… and then… do you want to talk about?"

Kallen nodded grimly, looking down. "Yeah, sure."

"So… where do you start?"

"It wasn't any good." Kallen sternly shook her head. Any chuckles were gone, as she focused firmly on the matter at hand. "I was taking out my frustration on Lelouch, I just wailed on him for what I thought was ruining my year, while I was ruining his entire life. I've heard that he might be able to get surgeries to restore a bit of function, but while that was a very dark chapter in my life, he's the one that has to pay the consequences. I've worked a lot of the time since to change from the way I was, because it was my fault that I was in that situation in the first place. It's a process, but better to address it than let it be dormant."

"Were you contacted by your parents at any point, have they been any help?"

"No…" Kallen said, before flicking her eyes up at Olivier in confusion. She wasn't sure why the conversation went in this direction, as the truth was she didn't know where either of them were, or if they were even still alive. "No, Naoto has taken care of me for several years, but no, I'm not in contact with them. It was not… not like that. I feel I've dealt with it as best as I feel is in my powers."

"Indeed." Gerard nodded, sensing there was little to dig at in this line of conversation without broaching awkwardness. "In just a year, look where you've gotten to. You've made it from there, unemployed, to champion of the world. How much of that, the idea of being a champion, represents that change?"

Kallen took a breath, before letting it out in a comforting release. Oh, that feeling. The overwhelming comfort, the sudden, inescapable warm wave that washed over you and took you away to a place that was superior to the one you departed, for no discernable reason other than how you felt.

"The difference feels… so immense. But the difference between champion and runner up was… ten feet. The difference between of a tenth of a second over a two-hour race over an almost twenty race season… it's undeniably bigger than it would be if it were any other tenth of a second in any other race. I suppose that's why it's so important to maximise any advantage you can get, every inch you can grasp. We're in a sport... we're in a business of accomplishment. Championships are the height of that accomplishment."

"So what's your next target? You mentioned Fangio, you want more titles? Five championships?"

Kallen chuckled, and then murmured in inaudible snickers to Olivier, who snorted, and then replied "Save that for after the race, it's not safe to drink and drive.", buried in chuckles, before Kallen nodded, and spoke a bit more plainly.

"I'm feeling alright, at the moment. If I can get to drive, like I have done at Britain this year, Australia last year, I'd be a happy woman for years to come. Just keep the races coming, maybe branch out when the next big thing comes into town."

"And when you get to that, what then? What would be next for you?" Olivier asked. "Would there be something next beyond contentment with a good career? You've already done something few drivers could attest to achieving, only thirty-six. Or would you be thinking… that's me done, mission accomplished? Time to go home and cash in?"

"Oh no, heh… retirement, oh no." Kallen laughed, waving the notion off, even in the long term. "Not for me, I'd imagine. What, I'd arrive home, put my feet up and just… do what? I think I'd cop on pretty quickly that there's only so much fun you can have on a couch, retired at… what, thirty? Nah, nah, god I'd be so bored! I need… I need to be going fast, I just get all fidgety and restless if I'm waiting around doing nothing, I need to be doing something!"

Kallen paused for breath, her hands waving to emphasise her point. She had plenty of energy to get out of her, plenty of life to live. Any of it lived at anything other than full tilt would be time wasted as far as she could tell. No attack, no chance.

"So no, I think I'll not be doing that. You see all these athletes who can't stay retired and… we're all sorta conditioned to always be doing something, never getting a moments rest. You hear those cyclists whose bodies are so used to the physical stress, who need to get up in the middle of the night and do ten kilometres on the cycling machine so they don't have heart failure, there's not the decline, you don't allow your body to have a smooth tapering off in terms of the demand you're putting on it. There's always another race, another match keeping us to task, and it'd be such a shock to the system to just one day have nothing to do."

She sighed, and shook her head. "I've worked my whole life to get here. I wouldn't give this up for anything."

Olivier chuckled, visibly delighted. Kallen's propensity to foul language had been a concern when she was booked, but her animation was making for a wonderful interview. Smiling, he moved on.

"So what's next for Kallen Kōzuki?"


	2. The Fool

"Fuck you're drunk…"

The consulate officer raised a finger to reply, before, his body possessed by drink, convulsed, then being released from his possession in a loud belch. As his colleagues broke out into bellies of howling laughter, the dark-haired Scotsman had to take a breath, gasping for air as he recovered from the sheer volume of Al-Chark lager that had passed through his throat.

As he recovered from what felt like an out of body experience, the laughter around him quietened down, and he wiped his lips and snapped back at them.

"Laugh all ye want, I think you'll find that's a raise. 'Fancy seeing any of ye call."

That shut them up, at least or a moment, before his coworkers began to laugh again, though quieter, less in outrageous schadenfreude and more in disbelief as to the ridiculousness of the circumstances.

The Scotsman couldn't disagree. Even as he lavished in having won the drinking game, he could sense it was still strange for his coworkers. While he had been based in Damascus, Syria, as a civil servant operating out of the foreign office, for almost three years now, his two colleagues who had joined him on this evening at the bar were barely two months into their work at the consulate, and hadn't quite adjusted to weekly drinking games at dim bars in the small, busy corners of a Middle-Eastern city. He certainly remembered his first outing, lord, if the lads who had joined him tonight had seen him then, he was properly going past his limits then.

He was better now, at keeping a keen eye at the point where he had to stop. He wasn't there yet, but he was close. If they thought this was drunk Nathan, they hadn't seen anything yet.

Having pulled back, he sat more properly. He was the senior one, and had to at least feign at some respectability, to set an example for his comrades.

"Sit up lads, you're spilling your pints everywhere." he jokingly scorned, before pulling a cloth out of his breast pocket to clean the spillage onto the table, chuckling as his colleagues seemed to stiffen up.

As he wiped at the table, he nodded towards the barman to order his final round. He had been frequenting this bar long enough to be familiar with the staff, certainly enough for them to have picked up on his cues. While it wasn't the nearest venue to the consulate they operated out of, however the others felt uptight, overly formal, hardly places to unwind without any pressure to be proper.

Of course, it wouldn't matter in a short while; his three-year cycle would end soon enough, and while he had the option to renew, he wasn't sure if he would. While he had enjoyed his work in Syria on behalf of the foreign office, the temperature kept him indoors all but permanently under daylight. It contrasted heavily with his time in his time in Japan, where he had extended his three years to six, and then nine years, and then twelve, with the temperate climates proving much better for the Scotsman, who was far more comfortable in the cool, wet Highlands where he had grown up. While his time in the Middle East had cured his pale complexion, it seemed nothing could make the dry heat of Harrat al-Shamah, as beautiful as it was, not unbearably draining, the pure heat sapping any cell of energy out of Nathan's soul.

"Here's your drink sir."

"Cheers mate." he nodded, gripping the glass between his base of his thumb and the length of his fingers and bringing it up to his lips. The television in the back quarter of the room was quiet, and rarely was attention paid to it except when the Syrian state broadcaster showed an occasional world event.

It was only by chance, at four minutes past two in the morning, Eastern European Summer time, in this dark, dirty bar, nestled invisibly into the ancient sandstone walls in the chaotic architecture of the old city within the sprawling Damascus, on a CRT television that was deeper than it was wide or tall that displayed less pixels than Nathan had fingers to count, and had the frazzled audio quality of a cold war CB radio.

But it was enough to just, for that one moment out of so many possible moments, prick his ears, if only for a moment. The news reporter, speaking a formal Arabic, was reciting the news that didn't quite make prime time, listing off the various happenings in the world into the small hours.

"In other news, returning to Japan after clinching the World Drivers Championship in Brazil last week-"

An infinitesimal chance.

"-Kallen Kōzuki completed a series of interviews, including with this channel."

He choked on his drink, coughing out half a lung as the cool liquid was suddenly trapped in his throat with the sudden intake of air as Nathan Stadtfeld heard that name for the first time in almost two decades.

"No way…" he breathlessly gasped, as his hand barely kept him anchored to the table, having fallen off the chair in his wet coughs. "There's no way…"

"Are you alright mate?"

The question came from Tom, who had quickly placed his drink down to try and help Nathan up, however the older man wasn't paying attention to it; he was solely focused on the television, as it cut away to footage of the aforementioned interview.

And sure enough, appearing on the low-resolution cathode monitor was, though not a face Nathan had ever seen, was one he could not mistake for anything other than what it was. The dark red hair, firm brow, though with her mothers skin tone and eyes.

"It's her…" he whispered. "…Kōzuki…"

"Yeah, the Formula One driver. I don't watch it, though my mate's been mad about it, he was supporting Weinberg, Kallen became his teammate just before I was transferred out here."

Nathan looked at him, disbelievingly, barely able to stutter "No way…"

"For sure, she's been up and about for I think two or three years." Tom nodded, confirming his comments. "Why? What's wrong?"

Nathan didn't reply for a moment, as Kallen answered whatever question the reporter had asked, he hadn't heard. After she finished, it cut to b-roll of open wheel prototypes zipping around a track, and, barely discernible, the caption in the bottom corner, said it all.

"Kallen Kōzuki, Formula One World Drivers Champion."

"That's my daughter."

* * *

Kallen's flight touched down in Tokyo after a short stint of interviews and television appearances across the Americas to satisfy her sponsors several weeks after Brazil. She was welcomed at the airport building by a mass of fans, gathered around the terminal and out the back with signs of welcome return and congratulations. Even after a long time living in a semi-permanent state of mania, Kallen was plenty ready to meet the crowd, walking up and down the divider with a fence with a marker and autographing sheets of paper, various pieces of paraphernalia, and even a full-face bike helmet.

Though perhaps not organised as such, the crowd gathered at the airport turned into an informal parade, northwest out of Haneda and in towards the centre of the city. Eager to not give away where she lived, something both she and Naoto had gone to quite some pains to obscure so as to avoid giving their neighbours any hassle from vultures, she halted the impromptu gathering at Yoyogi Park to handle the remaining crowd, who had dispersed by the evening. However, Kallen was still unsure who might try and follow her to find her address, and so got a series of different cabs, some going the wrong way so as to misdirect any possible stalkers.

However, by five o'clock she was back, and, heart-warmingly, the block had prepared a reception, albeit less intense than the thousand-odd crowd outside the airport. A cake shared in Kallen's flat between the thirty people living in the building, and then a quiet evening of drinks.

This was several days later. New years had come and passed, with Kallen trying to walk to one of the quieter shrines in Tokyo's out of the way hinterlands for the yearly ritual. With the strict limits on testing time, out of season pilots were left with little to do other than keep fit and keep sharp in the simulators. Kallen had been able to race in the Daytona 500 in February of 2018, an incredible two years ago now, but that was only due to happy coincidence with Gino and Rivalz. Hopefully, she would be able to do it again.

Sitting on the balcony, sipping at a glass of whiskey, Kallen sighed, and for the first time in a week, relaxed.

"That was bonkers."

Naoto continued to nod, head slightly bent as his sister unwound, like a spring finally releasing after a long time compressed. He had been back, preparing the reception for Kallen as she took a victory lap, even if it was primarily to satisfy sponsorship obligations.

"Well done to you." Naoto tersely admitted. "We might have to make more room on the cabinet if you keep this up."

"Don't you worry, plenty more championships to come." she joked, as Naoto nodded back slightly in turn, lip bit. She had been very lucky, and was only champion by the grace of Naoto managing to nip past Xingke and Albert crashing. Winning even once took every trick Kallen had, and to win again, she would need to adapt, revolutionise, and bring a whole new level. Everyone was always improving, adapting; you not only had to improve, you had to improve faster than everyone around you.

But Kallen didn't mind. As Suzaku had demonstrated, having someone keeping a Bunsen burner to her heels hounded her and pushed her to new heights she could not have reached on her own, as they would break free of the confines of reasonable expectations in the single-minded pursuit of the win.

But for now, she relaxed, quietly thinking about the day, and about those ten feet that had made the difference. The critical, capstone ten feet.

"Thank you, Naoto." she whispered. Without him having overtaken Xingke, the Chinese pilot would have been the champion.

If one assumed that was a bad outcome, given the context that lay bubbling in Kallen's subconscious.

Putting on a cheery charade of being puzzled, he looked straight ahead, not turning to face her, and asked quietly "What're you thanking me for? All I did was drive as fast as I could to finish as high as I could."

And yet.

Kallen let her head dip slightly in a nod. Naoto had driven as fast as he could to get as far as he could. And yet, in spite of entering the race being the favourite to win the championship, he hadn't. In spite of driving as best he could the entire of the way through the race, he hadn't won.

His sister had.

This, of course, was the unspoken silence. Winning in Japan, that was one race, he was happy to join the celebrations. A championship? That may well be something different, Kallen didn't know. They had never discussed it, how could they with so little time, but Kallen felt a certain unease around him now, feeling somewhat like a rude interloper caught rapid in the midst of a burglary, if only to herself. However, she quietened these anxieties. She lacked even the purported qualifications of mind readers, and so she would not attempt.

And yet.

If it was not clear to him then, it must be clear now, to Naoto, that Kallen, in her capacity as a driver, was not an ally. There would only be one winner, and now, with a sense for how Kallen operated when pitted against him, Naoto would surely, on some level, be aware of the fact that for one of them to win, inherently, the other must lose.

Kallen, in her confidence, wasn't so much worried about this. She believed in her own speed, and now had a title to prove it, complete with a big trophy taking up space in the cabinet down towards the back. She, for all her faults, and indeed this might be counted amongst them, had no doubt in her own speed. Rather, her concern lay in Naoto. As he became more cognisant of the realities around him, Kallen was somehow nervous as to how he would respond on a personal level. It was absurd for her to doubt someone who had been so consistently kind.

And yet.

For all the kindness he had shown her over an entire decade, there was still some part of her that remained leery in contexts where she was possibly antagonising the person housing her. Of course, it was not improbable that Naoto shared this sentiment, given their shared experiences, however, she just as equally knew that she could take nothing for granted.

It was, after all, very easily taken away.

"What's it like?"

Kallen turned across, suspecting she knew the source of Naoto's vague verbal ponderings. However, she simply replied with a raised eyebrow.

"Winning a championship." he explained, though haltingly, and through an almost shamed tone. "I mean, I've won plenty, through the years, GP2, and so on… but Formula One."

She grimaced. What could she say? Naoto had been in prime position to win, after a decade of trying to raise himself and his younger sister, in his breakout season, watching his sister take the win out from fourth in the championship.

He must have been delighted, no doubt, but all drivers were fundamentally selfish. While Naoto, and Suzaku for that matter, might insist on some manner of ethic, an overdeveloped ego was inextricably linked to the sort of stubborn drive that would see someone bullheadedly force ones way into a sport like international motorsports.

Naoto loved Kallen, that much was clear. But Kallen did not delude herself into believing that he was entirely devoid of envy, nor aggrandise herself to such an extent where she believed he was wrong in feeling so.

So. How to convey it. Make it sound as grand as it surely must, surely was, an already impossible task, without rubbing it in. Naoto, after all, in light of the events of 2019, was no less ambitious and no less hungry for glory than any of them.

Sighing, she simply replied "It's spectacular. Just… fucking incredible. Like nothing else."

"I'dve imagined so." Naoto curtly nodded, head turned slightly away, and eyes turned slightly down. "Well done."

Kallen could not begrudge him. It was, in some irony, the closest Naoto had come to a champions temperament. That said, the overbearing quiet awkwardness would not break, and Kallen, in spite of herself, could not help but admit "I'm sorry."

"What're you apologising to me for?" Naoto frowned, still not matching her eyes. "You scored more points than I did."

Kallen sighed. Naoto was not likely to be unhappy that his sister, who he had worked so hard to raise and protect, was succeeding, but no driver wanted to imagine any reality that did not involve them being the greatest. Naoto knew this more than anyone, having gone through the process of having his confidence destroyed and having to rebuild it.

Kallen was the champion. That was the new reality. All Naoto could change was future, and hence the narrative, something Kallen did not doubt Naoto would be eager to do.

But still, for as much as Kallen prodded, Naoto would not be moved. She would poke and prod to try and get more of an insight into how he felt, but he would remain silent.

At that moment, she had a sudden realisation.

"Hang on, does that mean I can have it?"

Naoto, unsure what Kallen was talking about, finally turned and with a furrowed brow asked "What are you on about…?"

Kallen, now at attention, asked "I've won the championship, so does that mean I can get one?"

Frowning, Naoto replied "I don't know what you-"

"A bike."

The elder sibling blinked several times, before Kallen elaborated "You said, I couldn't get a motorbike, and I asked when I'd be allowed, you said when I was the World Champion."

Kallen watched as the cogs turned in Naoto's head as he summoned back the memories of his mistake, before processing it, and in real time went through every stage of grief.

"…I said that didn't I…"

Kallen laughed, and replied "Yes, you did. I had a look through one of those catalogues in the back of magazines, I had a really cool one from Hyōgo picked out, forgot in all the carnage. Squeezes a hundred and fifty horsepower out of a litre, it can get up to two-sixty kilometres-"

"You're really selling this to me well, what with me not wanting you on a big fast dangerous bike."

Kallen shrugged, and replied "You've no issue with me whizzing round a circuit in a big prototype at over two hundred miles per hour."

"That's completely different and you know it." Naoto declared, sternly. "A formula car is about as safe as can be, if you're keeping to ordinary conduct you'd do well to cop any serious injury. On a bike, you're totally exposed to the elements."

"Oh well." Kallen sighed. "'Should have thought of that before you said I'd be allowed to have one once I was champion. Full boar, big sports bike. Nice and agile, you really put your weight into driving one of those."

Sighing, Naoto, looking somewhat resigned, pleaded "You can't be serious."

"Hell yeah." Kallen nodded, enthusiastically. "Sure it's not as fast as your Rebellion or my Camelot but it feels it, it feels light and zippy, you're lower to the ground, it's lighter, the whole thing feels so intense. What, do you think I wouldn't want to give that a go?"

Naoto shook his head, and, chuckling, replied "You're nuts."

That wasn't a no. Satisfied with victory, Kallen leaned back, smiling in smug satisfaction.

But, while Kallen could well have done with an evening's rest after a year of struggle, there was one soul that never rested, no matter how many forces were attempting to squeeze it. And it started with Naoto's phone, buzzing away shake after shake after another shake, and as he looked at the stream of notifications, Kallen popped the question across the sunlight.

"What's up?"

Naoto paused, before saying back "Check the news, this can't..."

Raising her eyebrows in sudden urgency, Kallen checked her phone and opened social media channels to see what Naoto was talking about, and sure enough, there it was. She didn't even need to ask him to confirm, such was its implications.

"What the hell… Lelouch and…"

* * *

"Good- is this, is this stream? Stream's good, okay. Good evening everyone. We're here today to talk, at last, about the future."

Lelouch stood proudly and affirmatively, leg held in place beyond the view of the camera with a heavy brace, allowing the Frenchman to stand at the podium while using his hands as part of the presentation, as the lights dimmed and the presentation began. He wouldn't be able to walk as well, as the knee and heel joints on his right-hand side were completely locked in place to ensure he could stand without a visible aid, but he wouldn't need to walk for the purposes of this event. Clearing his throat, he continued, facing the audience in attendance.

"As some of you may know, events from last year have forced us to examine our current position, our position within the sport, and who we want to be moving forward. I would like to thank you all for coming, and if you could hold off on questions for a moment, there will be plenty of time at the end."

Lelouch took a pause to take a sip of his drink, before nodding. Everything was as he had wanted it; the journalists, all in their seats, set just so, all with provided refreshments. This had been exactly it. He invisibly smiled at that, at having a team that he could use as a conduit for his future plans, which would be important, given much of what he knew he would go on to discuss. Swallowing the last dregs of his water, he continued.

"Replacing Suzaku Kururugi would never be an easy task. He is a World Drivers Champion with this teams precursor, had fought with this team for his entire career, and his impact on the culture within this team cannot be overstated. We would like to thank him for all he has done, and for helping us to secure third in our inaugural World Constructers Championship. All of this is to say that we wish him well in his future endeavours. However."

He held dramatically on forever, and took unspeakable joy at the looks of the attendants. To have them waiting on his word. Yes, yes. This was what he loved. It took a while to find it, he had lived for so long just trying to get by with whatever grift would work, but this was different.

"However… however all good things must come to an end. It's always sad, to see someone who was so involved with the team depart, but with it comes an opportunity for new beginnings. With careful consideration, we have decided on who we intend to work with going forward, with a two-year contract plus an optional extension. He is a man of great integrity, whose talents have gone under the radar for many years. In spite of handling equipment unbecoming of his great talent, he persevered, until he was able to display his talent last year. With a sense of duty, he maintained a consistent strong work ethic, such that he had already displayed in a number of other disciplines, and had earned him six victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and four titles in the World Endurance Championship. He is the perfect capstone to complete this package, allowing all facets of the team from the engineers, mechanics, designers, and so on, to sync together in perfect harmony, as he fits into our architecture like a glove, as he has done so many times before. Ladies and gentlemen, Li Xingke."

It was a performance. He was just a theatre actor, doing his best to read the audience and adapt to best play off them. He was a conductor, balancing the energy of the room. Lelouch suddenly found himself at home, as he welcomed Xingke onto the stage from the wings. And like any good stage actor, Xingke played his role perfectly, giving the director, Lelouch, a feeling of immense satisfaction

Xingke completed the scene as he arrived at his parallel podium with a curt nod, and a professional "Thank you.", quiet enough to be more a communication with Lelouch than the crowd, but loud enough for the crowd to hear it.

Turning then back to his podium, Xingke cleared his podium and stood more properly, adjusting slightly to get himself stood just so, before beginning.

"Good evening. It is my pleasure to drive for a team like Schwarzenritter. It is my intention, it has been my intention, to win the World Championship for Drivers of Formula One, and that, obviously requires… a suitable team. A team with vision, with potential. Not history, history I cannot win with, but potential can be wielded. Schwarzenritter is a new team, but it has drive, and ambition, and has an effective leader. Of all the teams that may be said as being favourites for the title, it must surely be them. They had, at the end of the year, the best car of last season, if you compare, with a rookie being able to bring it to a tie with the champion, and they can only stand to improve as the team has been able to have its first full, uninterrupted winter to design and build a complete car, and engage in the full cycle of winter testing."

It was obviously practiced, at Lelouch insistence, but that much came with the benefit of audible polish and clarity. As Li was talking, Lelouch eyed back at the crowd, and the desired effect was had; he almost felt the air get sucked out of the room as the reality seeped in that arguably the greatest driver currently racing that did not hail from Japan was being brought into the fold of one of the most exciting teams on the grid. The Frenchman smiled, and, nodding, continued from where Xingke left off.

"I cannot agree more with what Li has said. We now have two of the best drivers, in the world, two of the most professional. Xingke, I can certainly vouch for, having looked through his portfolio, is arguably the best driver currently racing. The team is geared to being successful, all our partners, sponsors, and investors expect that of us, and in our first year we came within a hairs breath. Combining that package with… Xingke, the best, perhaps if you like to think of it, the best piece of equipment, that you could insert, so as to extract the optimum results, and I fully expect that our partnership shall bear fruit, the fruit of many wins and, come December of 2020, both the Drivers and Constructors Championship. But that is not all."

Lelouch took a pause, and drew breath into his chest, building up his ordinarily unimpressive stature. Hiding his perpetual rocking migraine, and gripping on to the podium for additional stability, Lelouch projected his voice across the room to draw pointed attention.

"Xingke noted the vision of our team, and that goes towards the second purpose of this press conference."

After a pause, Lelouch, forcing his way through the hand grenade that felt like was detonating inside his head, made what he believed would be a statement as significant as his signing of Xingke.

"It is our intention to, over the next few years, expand. Rosenberg, under the stewardship of Lloyd Asplund, was an institution that was represented in over a dozen fields of motorsport, and it is our intention to expand again from Formula One. Developing such infrastructure will take a long time, however we are beginning the process of partnering with appropriate parties so that this team can return to being a force within motorsports. Furthermore…"

Another pause, and then, with the crowd hanging on your word, hit them a third time.

"As I said, we have entered into a partnership with Li, which is incorporated into out plans to expand. It is our intention to open a dedicated training academy for up and coming talents, so that we can begin a young drivers program with dedicated facilities, to provide those with the drive a clear, predictable, and stable path through the junior serie to Formula One. This will benefit young talent without contacts or an ability to leap the ladder through non meritocratic means, and for us, we will benefit from having access to a unique pool of fresh, unknown talent we have scouted and professionally trained, who might not have otherwise have had an opportunity to reach the sport."

Lelouch would have been lost to the world of motorsports had it not been for a chance attendance of a birthday party at a go carting track, where he had unknowingly smoked the circuit lap record in the second heat, and it had been a permanent campaign of sleaziness and trickery with sponsors and racers alike to try and claw his way out of his caravan that had become his home after he and his siblings had been thrown out by his parents. There was never a direct path, every step of the ladder had to be climbed with some sleight of hand or sharp practice in conjunction with dominant performances. It had been easier back then, as while Lelouch had been below average in the field of Formula One, a below average F1 driver would still clean up with regional competitions, as Lelouch, two-time regional Formula Ford champion, two time FR 1.6 champion and one time Formula Three champion, had done.

Xingke had a story with similar details. He had seen the races in Adelaide, before chasing up any sports car race seat he could find in his home country. After years of following up the most desperate of leads, he struck gold in 2000, where he was slated to run with a sports car team over a regional endurance championship. After the sudden injury of a teammate, the seat that that teammate had been simultaneously been manning in Europe opened up for Xingke, just in time for Le Mans. In a storied 24-Hour race, he won his debut Le Mans race, cementing his status as the 'must have' driver in sports car racing. It had at no point been easy, been made clear. He was only here in spite of the circumstances, and Lelouch knew Xingke wanted to make it easier for future potential champions just as much as Lelouch wanted to be able to recruit those potential future champions.

With this in mind, Lelouch continued, driving home the business case for Xingke's dream.

"This will be achieved with our sponsors working in collaboration with his sponsors, as well as tertiary parties in what is, for us, a long-term investment, as our facilities will produce talented drivers who will spearhead our expansion from in-house. It will feature several brand-new, dedicated circuits, including one that doubles as an FIA Grade One track for officially sanctioned circuit events, skid pads, and separate rallycross and oval venues, which will add to the benefit the main track will bring members of our program. Our plan is to rise to the level of infrastructure to challenge the factory teams like Camelot and Rebellion on an industrial level."

As he leaned back, he watched his words sink in. He could barely contain his smile at imagining it; a great big facility, a great training track to rival the colosseums of old. A symbol of the teams future. A beacon to all the world that this was the place to go if you wanted to succeed in motor racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot of stuff being juggled. Hopefully I wasn't too heavy handed with some foreshadowing.
> 
> G1ll3s


	3. The Vile Maxim

All drivers believed themselves to be temporarily inconvenienced champions, and Gino was no different.

Time passed, and eventually it was time to start again at winter testing in Spain. For one team, it was a point of pride that they had arrived at the gates of the track first, and they were the first team out of the pits at the opening of doors on the Monday.

This team, of course, was Schwarzenritter, now with Xingke alongside Rolo manning the two Pacific Blue chassis. With the full development cycle allowing Lloyd to flex his design muscles, the pair had topped the time sheets on all but two of the days they ran.

This was not unexpected; the rules had not changed too greatly between 2019 and 2020. The scrubbing tyres that had been tried last year had been reintroduced, with the appropriate adjustments made bearing in mind the lessons from the previous season. With that basis, Schwarzenritters momentum had carried forwards from the previous year, and when combined with Xingke's affinity for the tyres it appeared that they were the presumptive champions before a wheel had been turned in anger.

Fuck presumptions.

Gino stared back into the mirror, and hissed it silently again. Fuck what was supposed to happen. He splashed water into his face again, as he moved to dry his hands. He'd waited in line for what was supposed to happen to turn up something good, and he'd waited long enough. It was not time to sit and wait; it was time to reach and grab.

He was not stupid. Kallen had swept in from under him to snatch his team, he was not so naive as to miss that, but he was not so ignorant as to have failed to recognise his own role in affairs.

"Gino, you okay?"

He breathed through drips from his cheeks, nose, and upper jaw, thrown by his gust into the mirror. He turned around, and called back into the meeting.

"Yeah, just washing my hands."

He dried himself and left the bathroom, letting the door swing as he returned to the corporate lounge overlooking Barcelona's pit straight. Seeing water dripping off Gino's hands, the Briton could see Kallen instinctively and reflexively flex her fingers, hiding them as she massaged the bloody consequences of the tic, red seeping out of the freshly opened wound that would never heal.

Still, as far as either of them could be concerned, it could be worse.

It was normally the host of big sponsors watching the races with complementary champagne from a cozy, air-conditioned room. However, it was Friday at the end of the second week of winter testing, and everyone was attempting to unravel what the data implied. Gino closed the door, and nodded "Sorry, please continue."

The chief engineer nodded, and looked back down at his notepad before he continued.

"So yes, as I was saying. Kallen has indicated a preference for shortening the wheelbase and compensating with increased rake. Naturally, this has resulted in increased instability indicated through the entire period of testing, as correlation has been confirmed. Naturally, our overall speed and grip has increased, but we need the increase to be proportional to the cars around us. From our data, all the air transfers smoothly down the body, but only in a very narrow set of operating circumstances. The setup window is narrow, but there is pace from our projections if the driver keeps the car under control. Would you agree with this assessment, Gino?"

Gino nodded. He knew what the data implied, at least as much as he cared to. He didn't have the fastest car. But the data he had been taking in was not only technical. Kallen had won the championship in what had been at times the third best car. Moreover, she had done it in the third best car that he had also been driving. She had been able to do it, it was within the mechanical limits of the car. That meant he could too.

And she had done it. Gino had brought it to the wire, but only because it had been such a chaotic season. If he hadn't done anything in January of 2019, if he hadn't brought Kallen into the fold, he would have this team around his finger.

Instead he was for the second time partnered with someone who was winning championships in the same car as him. Now, the common denominator was more apparent. He was the problem. He needed to get better.

Of course, that was the point. It was not as if Kallen had somehow cheated him out of something of which he had been deserving, it was simply that he had not been fast enough to claim it for himself. To win a championship was not merely a question of wishing away every difficult opponent, as other difficult opponents would surely replace them. Had Kallen not been his teammate, had he not made that phone call, it was not a certainty that the title would have been his instead.

Moreover, to make such a statement would be revisionist history. Camelot's second choice after Kewell had left had been Xingke, who had risen to take the championship by storm thanks to the new tyres, and there was no guarantee that Gino would have fared any better against him than he did Kallen. Even further, even if Camelot had chosen someone else, and Xingke had fallen earlier in the absence of a divided opposition, it was not a given that Gino would have been the one who was in place to pick up the pieces, as if one started playing around with history like that, anything else that was equally as plausible could remain on the table, and the run of the substance was lost. If Suzaku had not left Schwarzenritter, Naoto could well have been the one to pick up the pieces after Xingke's fall and steal the whole thing. After you considered how things might change in an alternate history, it was too easy for the slippery slope of fantasy to open up.

Kallen had not robbed him. Rather, she had shown him the light.

But he had a question, waiting in the air for him, and he answered it.

"Yes. On Monday, I was trying to rely on the downforce generated by the floor, and ran with minimal wing, but the air didn't flow with the grooves, it didn't stay attached to the body on the transition from the bulkhead down towards the third quarter. It didn't arrive at the rear in a predictable way, so we had a bit of rear slipping. Later in the day we found we could mitigate it with softer rear suspension, which also means we can run a stiffer differential, almost like a spool, however that means that tyre wear can get very intense on the loaded wheel. That's definitely a running theme, the setup window where you can get good airflow is really narrow, you need to have it exactly right or else you're buggered."

No. Gino would not follow the slippery slope of a fantasy history. Moreover, to do so would entirely miss the point. There had been a flaw in his driving, and without Kallen revealing them, exposing the common denominator of his weaknesses, they would have remained, exploitable for anyone who cared to compete against him.

It was for this reason he did not regret falling prey to his sympathies and inviting her aboard; he would have lost last year either way, only now, in this reality, he knew what he had to do to remedy his shortcomings, rather than remaining blind to them. In a reality where he had been able to, with the experience of having lost out to two different teammates, come to understand that it really was him, he had had a moment of reckoning with himself. His losses were his fault, he was slower, less skilled, sharpened less finely.

But he wouldn't improve without acknowledging that. He had come close last year, closer than he ever had before. He didn't need that much more pace, just a bit more. He could do that. And he would. It could be done.

Being the fastest meant learning from faster drivers so as to overtake them. Kallen had faster. Gino planned to change that, but first he had needed to learn why she was fast and incorporate that in some form of synthesis.

He had come close last year. Not again. This would be his year, by any means necessary.

He would leave no stone unturned. Over the winter, he had replaced his helmet with one that had no paint, with the visible shell just being the carbon fibre core that was left exposed with sponsor designs stencilled in with lightweight flaking. Having a helmet with no heavy paint saved six grams, or three thousandths of a second per lap. He had stopped doing many of his regular muscle building exercises, instead focusing exclusively on building his lungs. The weight he would lose from his atrophying muscles would add up to about a kilogram of shed muscle, saving roughly three hundredths of a second. Nothing left unturned, everything was expendable. He just needed to win.

Bullish as that train of thought arrived at the station, Gino nodded "It's fast though. It's a bit down on top end speed, there's so much grip. It tempts you to take on more steering lock, and the front end will let you, but it scrubs up these tyres something awful. You just need to be… aggressive."

Gino cast an eye aside to gauge Kallen's response. He knew she had no conception of restraint, and so would push like it was a qualifying lap regardless of the consequences. He was perfectly willing to engage with an opponent on their own terms. He wouldn't beat her in qualifying, few could, but points weren't awarded there. Why fight a battle that would only compromise his ability to fight the war.

He had the skill to beat her, with discipline. He wasn't faster, but he was better. He couldn't put together a qualifying lap like she could, but there was one weakness that, in his studies, Gino knew he could exploit.

She would not, over the course of a race weekend, propose any grand change to the basic car setup she was given on Friday, instead settling on learning to adapt her driving to make do with the car she had. It was a trait likely borne out of her early years of driving inexpensive cars without a significant technical range in setups, and she wouldn't spend the hours toiling to get a race setup just right like he would.

She had, of course, found success this way; whether the car was sharp or dull, well set up or poorly set up, she would maximise whatever she was given. Since that had always given her results, she had not, in her sweeping changes for the 2019 season, thought to learn how to perfect a car's setup beyond the basics, seeing no need to. But even for her unique driving style, a poorly set up car still had a lower ceiling than a well set up one, no matter how well it was driven.

After all, her style was fast; all operations were focused on the task of rotating the car, and the task was simply left to her laser focus and talent to be attentive and catch the microtwitches that that sort of style incurred. And Gino knew he could strike here. Mimic Kallen's frenetic driving style, and augment it with a setup that would make the car sing. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Gino knew what every surface, every mechanism, contributed to how the car felt, and exactly how they all interacted in a way the "arrive and drive" Kallen couldn't grapple with as well, Kallen was someone who was content to drive the package she was given, never being fussy about making it better, never insisting that something specific be changed to suit her. But that wouldn't work with this car.

It was a very polite sort of trait, but Gino could hardly pay mind to manners in pursuit of his goal.

He was better than her. He would push harder, dial in the car better, and win the championship. He would beat Kallen this year, or die trying.

* * *

For as much as Gino was worrying about it, the Schwarzenritter LL02 was not a massive revolution of the LL01, in spite of the latter being little more than some scribbles Lloyd Asplund had rushed over a long night in the studio after having been awake for over seventy-two hours.

Hardly his best work.

This was all because Lelouch was keeping all resources pointed towards 2021, when the regulations were changing. The last change had increased engine sizes in the winter between 2017 and 2018, however the 2021 regulations would dramatically shrink the cars in both width and length, forcing a radical redesign of team chassis. Lelouch did not deem it wise to be investing heavily in big new designs the year before a big regulation change. Just a few refinements of the basic concept, before the work moved to 2021.

Lelouch had no doubts of Lloyd's craftsmanship. He may have doubted his financial aptitude, but his engineering was beyond question. The Frenchman's concerns lay elsewhere.

"On the data, how are the drivers dealing with it?" Lelouch asked. "Anything you're noticing in our new pilot, Xingke?"

"Xingke is a simply terrific devicer." Lloyd nodded enthusiastically. "His efficiency yields are within four percent of Kururugi's, and he's twice as old! If only I'd been able to grab him in his prime. It's just…"

Lelouch, like a lizard, immediately and reflexively pivoted his eyes, lasering in on Lloyd's hands of all things, before whispering "What?"

Lloyd frowned, before pursing his lips and explaining, with a few pauses, "Just two things. He's… not integrating with the team that well."

Noticing Lelouch raising his eyebrow, Lloyd sighed, before Cecile, who was standing at his side, explained what the man who was not very emotionally intelligent himself meant by the comment.

"Xingke's… somewhat aloof. He doesn't really talk with the team in any social capacity, just states his feelings on the car and goes up to his quarters. It's dampening the team morale a bit, they aren't getting the same connection they did to Kururugi."

Lelouch nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

Nodding gratefully, Lloyd added "As well… his performance… does taper off later into stints. His… pace falls, his efficiency drops, there's… a few mistakes after thirty or forty laps, very consistently, it's every time he does a long run, at there or thereabouts the same point in the run. In that respect your brother is the more reliable tester on long run performance."

Lelouch silently swore. This could be a problem. But immediately, he paused. His instinct was to find the escape chute, and work out how to get out of what looked like a problem, but he needed more data.

Rolo was the problem. He was making Lelouch doubt himself. He didn't know what to do.

"What do you recommend I do with them..."

A very simple request. It was entirely normal for an executive to ask an operator about operating procedure. Lelouch gritted his teeth. That was all it was. It was normal.

It was the impossible puzzle. Well, that was not true. It was the very possible puzzle. And Lelouch knew the answer, but he couldn't say it, he needed to be told. He wouldn't allow himself, quite, to assert what he needed to do, he needed the excuse of it being "expert advice."

He was pathetic.

After all, it was not as if he didn't know what Lloyd would say. Moreover, he wasn't even sure if it was right. Making a decision founded on averting what might be perceived as nepotistic was no less grounded on Lelouch's understanding of what would or would not benefit Rolo, it was simply inverted so as to specifically disadvantage him. If, in an effort to try and not favour his brother, he chose to back Xingke, and it transpired that Rolo was clearly the faster driver, he would have no less avoided his fear of harming the project with his foul personal idiosyncracies and insecurities than if he had embraced them rather than running from them.

Lloyd, failing in his wonderful innocence to appreciate Lelouch's inner dialogue, gave an earnest answer.

"I would recommend focusing on developing the car around Xingke, his weaknesses are ones we can work on. Rolo's ceiling is high, but it's not up with Xingke or Suzaku. Xingke seems to enjoy the car very open, so he can move very classically across the track in broad sweeps that don't put a lot of energy through the chassis, it's probably a holdover from his endurance days. Rolo doesn't like a car that swoops, he's very direct with the steering, almost darting, very tight. We can tune some of that out in the setup though. That's no discredit, but we're shooting for the championship, as you said."

Lelouch nodded, before affirming, if only to himself "I did."

He liked Lloyd. Contrary to Lelouch, who was sometimes in such depths of subterfuge that he found himself choking and drowning, Lloyd couldn't lie. Well, he probably could, but he didn't have a need to; he had few secrets, and even fewer shames. While he wasn't an unindulgent man, he was not one to hide his indiscretions. The only driving axis of Lloyds life that drove him to burn the midnight oil seemed to be beating Rakshata. Lelouch envied him. He had colours, flown proudly for all to see. Not everyone liked them, but he was Lloyd Asplund and they were his colours, and no one elses. He was a person, he had a tangible set of traits that made him inescapably himself.

Lelouch didn't have any colours. Lelouch was a chameleon, reflecting the colours of whoever he was trying to sell something to. He could only mimic. There was nothing about Lelouch that inescapably defined him; every trait he had was subject to what benefited him in the moment.

If anyone would give him an honest answer about Rolo, if anyone could be counted on to not try and impress Lelouch by telling him what he wanted to hear, it was Lloyd. Lelouch couldn't have asked for a more suitable person to work with. A man who only told the truth matched with a man who only told lies. It would have been ironic, if Lelouch had any appreciation for poetry.

But the problem of Rolo remained. In one way, Lelouch cursed that he had ever introduced his brother to racing. Or, at least, that he had involved his brother in his new team. 'Go tend for your own career, I will send you money but I cannot look out for you.', he could have said anything to this effect, and it would have been better for them both. Lelouch certainly had no idea what to do with him. Lelouch had spent over a decade looking after him, now he didn't know how to disentangle himself from him.

Just misguided affection. It had lost him Suzaku, the little-

No, Lelouch sighed. He couldn't. It was beyond even him to look at his younger brother and say any of this. He knew he was a coward, but while he in his heart could harbour hate, in his speech he could not muster it against Rolo. Rolo had done nothing wrong other than be born to the wrong brother.

Lelouch sighed, before rubbing his forehead again. He would only wish having himself as a brother upon his worst enemy. He could only hope Rolo would understand.

"Let's go with your plan then."

* * *

"Xingke? Nǐ yǒu yī fèn ma?"

Li Xingke looked up from his phone, earphones dangling from his shoulders, across the room to the doorframe, and the freshly appeared figure of Lelouch Lamperouge. He paused, having been suddenly disrupted and taking a moment to recover and come to grips with his context, which had been lost as he had allowed himself to slip into a comfortable nap.

However, the wheels turned in his head pretty quickly, and he copped on to both where he was and what Lelouch had just said. Another moment mulling over what the unintuitive sentence construction, and Xingke, several moments after Lelouch had first spoken, finally came to grasp what was being asked of him.

Eager to avert giving off an impression of laggardness, he jerked very suddenly to attention, turning across himself on his couch, faced just away from the door, only for the move to backfire, as Xingke forgot that the seat did not extend forever, and he ran out of cushion and fell to the ground clumsily.

He quietly murmured some vague expletive, before he stood as rapidly as his chest would allow him, and curtly replied "Dāngrán."

It took a few moments for Lelouch in turn to process this, and Xingke, smirking, continued "You know what, let's not do this in Chinese. I don't speak French, but English is mutual."

"And mutually foreign." Lelouch sighed. "Still, it'll have to do."

Xingke nodded, before following Lelouch down the hallway into a meeting room, before pausing to add "As an aside… it's not a literal translation. When you're saying 'Do you have a minute', you don't literally use fèn, just use shíjiān whenever you're talking about a generic unit of time, at least I'm assuming that's what you're saying."

"Ah…" Lelouch aired, sounding as if a fresh understanding had suddenly descended upon him, before he momentarily stopped walking. Leaning his back against the wall for stability, he fetched his phone and typed in a note, before adding "Was just a phrase, I'll remember that."

Xingke frowned, asking "You're learning Chinese?"

"Sure." Lelouch nodded, as he pocketed the phone and turned to continue down the hall. "Want to make you feel welcome, might as well put in the effort to do it. You're part of the family now."

Xingke chuckled, before shaking his head. "What do you want Lelouch? What's your game?"

"I have some thoughts. About the team."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Lelouch affirmed, biting his lip before, with a raised eyebrow, asking "We have a problem Xingke?"

"Nah it's grand." Xingke waved off. "I get what you're trying to do with them out there, you're trying to pump them up, but I don't need that, I'm just waiting to get back in the car and do laps. That's my job on this team."

Sceptical, Lelouch sarcastically replied "Oh, you're different?"

Xingke shrugged and asked "Do you usually go around spending billions on big colosseums in the middle of China for anyone who asks? For your sake I'd hope I'm at least a bit special."

"Oh certainly." Lelouch admitted. "But not for the reason you think."

Frowning, Xingke asked "Where are you going with this?"

"Xingke you're thirty-eight years old." Lelouch stated plainly, finally putting his foot down. "How about you and I be honest about what we both want out of this. I want to squeeze out that last bit of talent you have in you to give this team a right shot of motivation. And you want to win that championship. Let's do that. Now I'm not paying you, and I'm certainly not paying for that big oval in China, to get the driver you used to be, I signed up to get the driver you are right now."

Xingke frowned, as Lelouch stopped walking and turned to face the Chinese pilot.

"I'm not buying the accomplished driver that justified the quiet, reclusive attitude with huge speed. That Xingke was great, but he left the building ten-odd years ago." Lelouch explained, with a huff. "I want today's Xingke, with all the stuff that makes today's Xingke an incredible asset, warts and all, but that demands more of you then just the driving. I didn't sign you just to get the bits when you're sat in the car. You're smart, experienced, understands what it takes to build up a team. You're someone who can be an example for everyone else, someone who can spur them on a bit, give them a sense that they're part of a team with a winning mentality, a team that's hungry for it. Now I know that you are able to do that, but the question is whether you're willing to do that, to communicate to the team that you're in the trenches with them."

Xingke gritted his teeth. He understood what Lelouch required of him, but he also knew he was not long for this world. His was a one way trip, and he couldn't bear to grow attached to yet more people that he knew he would have to say goodbye to in the near future.

But he couldn't just say that. Pursing his lips, Xingke sighed "Alright. I get you."

"Hěn hăo ma?"

Xingke chuckled, and shook his head before acknowledging with no shortage of irony "Oui."

Satisfied, the Frenchman turned back and continued to the conference room. Taking keys out from his pocket, he unlocked the door began walking through, without visible difficulty, however as he tried to take the keys out of the door and pocket them, he dropped them, leaving them to clang harshly on the floor.

"Damn." Lelouch hissed, beginning to bend over, before Xingke knelt down to grab them and hand them back to him. Lelouch paused, before chuckling, and nodded "Thank you. Just over here."

He led Xingke inside, before pointing over to a chair for the Chinese pilot, and shuffled over to his own. As Lelouch turned around to sit at the chair, he bent down, left hand against the table to support him, and reached to the side of his knee, where from the outside the linen trousers he twisted some mechanism locking his leg brace in position, loosening it and allowing his weak leg to buckle limply, which in turn allowed him to go from a stood position to a seated one without any need for a walking stick.

"Now." Lelouch began, after letting out a sigh of exhaustion. "Just.. one other thing."

Xingke's eyes narrowed slightly, suspecting where this was going and not liking it.

"These times are good, and you're giving solid feedback that's helping us dial in the car." Lelouch explained. "It's just… Lloyd brought something to my attention I wanted to check in on. Near the end of a stint, the consistency drops, the lap times both get longer and more inconsistent. Is there something with the car that causes this? Does the car get loose, is it something we can fix?"

Xingke's heart sank with every word Lelouch spoke. He had been working to cover off the growing weakness, to try and get this, his last chance, but if it was noticeable already…

He shook his head, sighing "It's…"

Taking a breath, he affirmed "It's not a problem with the car. It's on my end, I just need to get better at this car."

Lelouch frowned, briefly pausing to massage his forehead. The headaches must be intense today, Xingke thought.

After a moment, Lelouch let his hand down, and murmured "Odd."

Xingke in turn looked confused, and raised an eyebrow back to the Frenchman in uncertainty.

"It's just…" Lelouch hesitated, "You're not one for inconsistency. You're normally solid as a rock, I remember, back when I was in an F3 support race the weekend of… I think it was one of your last Le Mans, I won and decided to stick around before I went back down south, I remember one of your stints, 3:35.2, 34.9, 34.8, 34.8, 34.8, 34.9, 34.8, for the entire length of a stint. It was just immense consistency. Is there anything going on, anything we can help with?"

"No." Xingke said, shaking his head. "It's not something you can help with."


	4. Resfeber

February came and went. Kallen, Rivalz and Gino made a second go at the Daytona 500, with Kallen wrecking early in the race to finish thirty-ninth, 2018 winner Rivalz losing the draft and finishing twenty first, a single lap down, and Gino finishing four laps down in twenty-ninth. In all, it wasn't much to brag about. As March beckoned, the season was all set to go, this time beginning in Bahrain after a schedule reshuffle. To protect the environment, the calendar was made to consist of less haphazard globe-trotting, instead now consisting of three continental stages. The Americas came first, including a new track in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, before Europe took the summer months, and the season would round off in Asia. The only exceptions to this new regime, which cut down on multiple long-haul trips to tracks that were globally proximate and, ultimately, redundant, were the Middle Eastern races of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, the first and final race respectively.

Kallen was ambivalent. It would save a lot of money for teams, such as the desperate Ashford RT outfit Lelouch used to drive with, which was at this point haemorrhaging sponsors, however to Charles, at least in all public representations he had made, this point seemed incidental to the proposal. Charles seemed more focused on the environmental benefits of fewer freight flights, not an unworthy goal, but missing one of the key challenges facing teams. To Kallen, given how often she returned home to Japan to cool off after a race weekend, it didn't matter, however she did at least acknowledge that having a team haul hundreds of tonnes of equipment from England to the same place several times for several different events, rather than doing them all in one leg and saving up to four two-way journeys across the ocean, seemed if nothing else silly.

Naoto had already left for Bahrain with Suzaku and company, with the longer transit time of a car, crew, and amenities out of Japan necessitating an earlier departure for Rebellion as compared to Camelot, who were shipping out of Britain. It had been an amusing peculiarity in the household, them driving for not only rival teams but ones in direct competition, at the height of their discipline. While there had been a turf war of sorts over sporting décor in the apartment, it had mostly been in jest, and each was willing to be seen in proximity to the others colours, at least inasmuch as the sponsors permitted. However, you wouldn't mistake the rooms for ones inhabited by people that were not madly passionate for their sports teams, as much as anyone anywhere in Japan or elsewhere.

All that being said, Kallen herself was not going to be long in following Naoto to the Emirate, as the difference was perhaps only a few days. Enough for Kallen to pack everything away and work her way through the tubs of lasagne Naoto had been experimenting with while enjoying some of the high-octane melodrama of whatever the latest fad television show offered.

It wasn't bad, not by any means, Kallen smirked, as on the screen someone ran crying into the rain away from someone else for some reason.

And then the door knocked.

Kallen frowned. They didn't normally get visitors that weren't planned ahead of time, and even then the Kōzukis preferred to meet people at neutral locations. All their mail went to a PO box across town. The landlord? Naoto had sorted out the rent for 2020 before he'd left. Curious, Kallen switched off the show she wasn't watching and walked up to the door, as the quad rap repeated a second time.

"Hello?" she asked, not sure what to expect.

"Kallen?" a voice called, a woman. "Is it Kallen?"

"That's very dependent on what you might do with that information." Kallen leerily replied, before asking "Hold on fuck, how did you get my address?"

"Oh my…" the voice stuttered hesitatingly, seemingly in the depths of a shattering realisation. "Kallen, it's you, my Kallen…"

She frowned, wondering 'What on Earth…', before she pulled the bolt out of the lock, and allowed the half dozen chains to pull open until they had picked up the slack, allowing her a view of the woman behind, and as she caught it she stepped back in shock.

"Mum…"

Of all the people it could have been, Kallen had not expected it to be Kasumi Kōzuki, her mother.

"You ca-"

The woman she had not seen in ten years, that had been on her own for a decade, was back. She doubted a week of preparation could have given her enough time to think of a suitable comment, introduction, or even a witty quip to defuse the tension.

Kasumi was seemingly prepared to take the lead, and, smiling, asked "How's my darling?"

Stuttering, Kallen could only attempt "I…"

She faltered, before, with futility, trying again "What ha…"

Nothing. She could find nothing. So much to say, and she couldn't find a syllable of it. So much had happened, so much had been missed, that she didn't even know where to begin. It was beyond unexpected, her mind was just a white sheet.

So much so that Kasumi frowned, and asked "Kallen?"

She was frozen, a rock statue. What was to be done?

Invite her in.

"It's…" Kallen began, before pausing again, and nodded "One second."

She closed the door, before rushing through the various chains and locks to open the door, and allow her in. As Kasumi stepped into the apartment, Kallen nodded, and as she closed the door behind her, she commented "You should have called, I'd have put the kettle on."

Her mother didn't reply, instead looking around at her childrens apartment, and how they had managed in her absence. Kallen, suddenly embarrassed at the omnipresent branding covering the walls, apologising "I'm really sorry, the place is a mess."

"It's fine." she chuckled, waving off the proposition. She looked about the front room, combining the roles of kitchen and dining area, as Kallen tried to go back to the cooler and hide the bottles of whisky without drawing attention to it. The opportunity allowed her to put the kettle on, and ask "I'm sorry, do you want anything, a cup of tea, something?"

Kasumi didn't answer at first, having caught sight of the room off to the side just beyond their bedrooms, containing, one side of the room for each of them, all the trophies they had accumulated over their careers, lining shelves the way down the narrow room.

As she absentmindedly cast her eye down the short corridor, Kasumi couldn't help but murmur "They're beautiful."

Kallen frowned, uncertainly. As she was getting more used to her mother being back, more questions were coming up. In Naoto's telling, she had let go of them because she couldn't keep up with them ignoring responsibilities, playing truant, wasting money on racing, and otherwise putting her under stress. For her to be now admiring the rewards it had produced was, if nothing else, odd.

"Why…" Kallen began to ask, before starting again after an uncharacteristic stutter, "Why did you visit? Why are you here?"

"What reason do I need?" she replied. "I wanted to see my daughter."

Kallen cast her view down, slightly. It certainly… what was it certainly? Kallen had spent so long becoming accustomed to only having Naoto for company that her mother returning was something of a disruption. At the same time, she clearly missed her daughter, and Kallen, though she rarely stopped to consider it, had been oftentimes left to comfort and reassure herself, as busy as Naoto often was, having to keep her nose fiercely focused of her own impetus, with nothing except the fire inside her to keep her going.

She had missed Kasumi, although she had never managed to form the internal language to recognise it. It had been mentally exhausting, as resilient as she had become. After all, she had come to recognise how much of herself had been stripped away in pursuit of success, which sat no better with herself now than it had the morning of the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix, as much as she had forgotten about it over the course of the race itself.

It might be nice to reintroduce some of the old times into her life. It wasn't as if she couldn't do with it, as she tensed her burnt hands.

"It's…" she began, before pausing, and smiling "It's great to see you."

"And you as well." Kasumi smiled in return. There was a lull, before she suddenly asked Kallen "How's Naoto? Is he… seeing anyone?"

"Not so far as I'm aware…" Kallen replied, brow fuzzling. It was a curious question, but she brushed it off. "Did you want to see him? He left yesterday, I'm really sorry, if he was who you were looking for-"

"No, I wanted to see you." Kasumi shook her head. "I wanted to check up on you, especially now that you're a champion! How could I not come to celebrate that with my baby?"

Pausing, Kallen suddenly had a thought, and asked "How did you find me?"

"A mother has her ways." Kasumi smirked. "Besides, that's all dragging down the day. How're you getting on in school, what was your high school final grading?"

Kallen sighed, having to admit "I didn't get one, I didn't finish high school."

After a moment, she looked down and continued "Dropped out after failing second year. You know I was never academic, mum."

"It's worked out for you, that's for sure." Kasumi chuckled after an uncertain moments frown, before adding, in what felt like a new verbal paragraph, "So."

Kallen blinked, and repeated inquisitively "So?"

Kasumi smirked, and asked, eyebrows raised, "Did you miss me?"

Blinking, and after a moment that hung just long enough to be awkward, Kallen replied, "For sure, for sure." Qualifying that statement, she added "I've been really busy, I haven't really been able to stop and get any breath, let alone worry about things."

"Even though you've not been in school?" Kasumi frowned.

"Yeah… but I'm still busy." Kallen argued. "I've got a job, I'm keeping up the bills, trying to head where I'm needed for my employer. Part of the reason I couldn't keep up with school was trying to keep up with race meetings, but it's been a decent time, and pooled with Naoto we're paying all our bills."

"Fair enough. It's lucky that you both have been able to keep everything together without diplomas."

Kallen's nose wrinkled. She had grown up in these walls, and didn't like them being derided.

"It's home." Kallen defensively replied. It certainly wasn't anything like the place Kallen had been born in, though she barely remembered it. That old house wasn't huge or luxurious, but it was a palace compared to this, at least it was inasmuch as Kallen could recall. Ten years had been a long time.

However, just as much as it had been a long time for her, it seemed to have been even longer for Kasumi. While there had never been any photos of either of Kallen parents - Naoto didn't like to keep any - she did remember faintly what she had looked like, and the years seemed to tell stories. Hygiene was a strange thing to notice, but it was somehow unavoidable, in spite of her appearing ostensibly well presented. Indeed, she looked demure and pretty, with a plain dress and hair tied back. Just the little things that had been missed painted a picture, building together to form a mosaic of someone who hadn't had the ideal decade, in spite of her obvious attempts to make the best of it.

But at the same time, neither had Kallen, she acknowledged. And even so, she was her mother. As much of a rebel as Kallen was, the cultural reflex to care for family was still overriding. Instinctively, Kallen, concerned, asked "Where are you at these days?"

Kasumi sighed, and replied "I've lost the place at Kawaguchi, couldn't pay for the upkeep. I'm staying with your aunt in Mito."

Kallen blinked. Kasumi has a sister?

She blinked again. She has an aunt? Kallen realised she didn't know. Naoto had always been gruff whenever questions of extended family arose.

Seeing Kallen's forebrow scrunch, she nodded, continuing "Yeah! With my sister Kaori, our brothers Takeshi, Yoshio, and Hisao are also about the place, mostly up in Hokkaido or thereabouts."

Filing that curiousity for later probing, Kallen asked, concerned "How are you keeping up? That home had a lot of memories…"

Kallen internally shook. She hadn't thought, she hadn't wondered. Perhaps in her constant fighting to scrape up at the peak of her sport, to try and scratch clear some view through the dark ceiling, to make it to where she was, one of the foremost competitors in the world, she had lost something, some bit of her treasured, ancient self.

She had reached much the same conclusion before in her quiet wonderings, that narrow dark cobble of predawn Brazil, looking out into the black horizon like it might eat her whole out of charity, or pity. She missed… perhaps a Kallen that didn't exist anymore, perhaps one that had never existed, that only existed in an imagined past, but that was besides the point.

She could not fault Naoto for anything. He had put in superhuman work for her and never asked for thanks. He could never have been expected at sixteen to care for both himself and a nine year old in tow with barely enough from his job to make rent. No teenager should have to do that alone, and then to fund a single seater career for both himself and for that nine year old…

Kallen shook her head. Of course not. Naoto had not done anything wrong, just a kid trying his best and doing more than could ever have been expected of him. And he hadn't even let Kallen go hungry for a day, as much as Kallen suspected he had gone hungry himself some days. But that experience had undeniably shaped him into an austere, shrewd character. It had been necessary, he'd not have made it otherwise, and Kallen, feeling increasingly guilty over judging her brother who had done her no wrong, couldn't help but feel that it had had an influence on her. She had had no time to relax beyond perhaps a shared film screening over microwaved curry. Her only hobby had been to improve at racing, she had dedicated all her passions to it, dived into it, ignored the loneliness that came imparted in the sudden news that she was not going to be able to live with Kasumi, not be able to stay in the comfortable, nurtured life.

Naoto couldn't have been expected, in his struggle to keep them housed, to fulfil that need. Of course. Even as she consciously reiterated it, she felt it should not have needed to be said. But that did not mean that it did not exist, did not fester, to the point where she could so such a thing as sit into her car at Brazil in 2019 and deny Xingke a dying title, even if it was his wish for her to do so.

Ultimately, childish as it was, she could only look back fondly on those days. There had been less to worry about, their situation was less precarious. It was a purely aesthetic nostalgia, Kallen knew. It was like wishing for that Garden that was in that Christian book.

It was fundamentally reactionary. It was a retreat into a simpler reality, an attempt to escape from the complex difficulties of this one. A retreat into a simpler Kallen, into simpler dynamics and simpler times. The idea wasn't unappealing, to return to that place before the knives had begun to dig in.

She could let go. She could return home, to her old anchor. It had been lost at sea, but it had been found again, and now all she wanted was to put down in harbour. She had all the tight neurotic tensions she had been forced to develop to succeed, bound up into her back, held upright to attention. She remembered a time when that wasn't the case, where she had Kasumi, and the world wasn't as scary.

Perhaps that was the appeal.

Kasumi, unknowing, nodded, and answered Kallen's question.

"I'm holding up alright…" she began. "Emotionally, at least, it is what it is, obviously I had to let go of the house, but I'm getting by…"

Kallen's eyebrows raised, as she asked "Do you need any help?"

"If… if you want to…" Kasumi hesitated, looking up at Kallen, face tilted slightly down. "As a thanks. Just a little for the month."

Kallen nodded. But that seemed impersonal, particularly the first time she had seen Kasumi in ten years. The occasion merited more.

"I tell you what." Kallen sparked, suddenly thinking of something. "I'm allowed one guest to attend my races, I've usually either given it to Naoto, back when he was injured, or just sold it off, but you can have it, just to get your spirits up."

Kasumi, however, didn't seem enthused, which disappointed Kallen. She had been gone for so long, it seemed a shame that she wouldn't want to see her live out her lifelong passions.

"C'mon, you've never seen me race mum. It'll be fun to get away for a bit, and catch up."

Kasumi paused, seeming to think for a moment, before shrugging.

"If that's what you want dear, of course I'll come."

* * *

Kallen may have been rough about the edges at times, but she had a personality that was in your face, and unavoidably marketable. When it came to a race weekend, most people knew Suzaku Kururugi, you may get a few cheering for the immortal smile inhabiting the body of Gino Weinberg, but everyone even moderately interested in the sport knew Kallen Kōzuki, the brash, boisterous, outspoken heel. She had such a palpable presence both on and off track that was unavoidable and unignorable that you could not help but hold your breath whenever she was on track.

The Kallen Kōzuki qualifying lap, for example, became as integral a part of the race weekend as the parade lap or the podium ceremony. People would look forward to it, would anticipate the moment she would blitz through the circuit and amaze them with how mind-bendingly fast she could get round, and how much of a one-lap edge she could blow clear of the next closest competitor.

In Q3, all eyes would seek out the dayglo red helmet, the firm, clenched arms, the shaky rear end and the head, slightly dipped, focused religiously on the next apex. In terms of extracting the maximum possible from the package over a single lap, Kallen presented a visual mastery for spectators, approaching at impossible speeds and just... handling it, dealing with whatever troubles the car presented as they cropped up, in real time, oftentimes adjusting the steering and the brake bias mid corner to the fraction of an inch.

The Kōzuki pole lap became so iconic that, when other drivers saw the bright red helmet in their mirrors, would leap out of the way to avoid ruining The Lap, to avoid being known around the paddock as the person who had ruined The Lap, so notorious that it merited capitalisation. It was horrifically unstable, with the car often exhibiting a terrifying squirming and squirrelling about the tarmac as if it were ice, but Kallen was always able to direct the monster, raw and unrefined as she often took it, around the track by the horns. While this lap-time centric doctrine often failed to deliver on race pace and tyre life, as her conversion rate was just twelve wins from eighteen poles, but the spectacle was often a wonder unto itself. And as the circus unloaded in Bahrain, Kallen intended to start the new decade with a bang.

"Alright, so from your last qualifying lap did you want anything changed?"

Kallen, deep within the cockpit, shrugged, and replied "Not really. It worked last time, I didn't have any problem finagling it up the road. No problems."

"Nothing you want to adjust, optimise it?"

"Sure I'll be able to work with it." she waved off, uncaring. "So long as I can just drive well it shouldn't make a huge difference, I mostly drive around the car anyway."

Nigel retreated for a moment, frowning, before shrugging, and moving to inform the engineers that no changes needed to be made. Kallen, after a moments thought, settled back into the car, moving her shoulders in and getting comfortable. She had worked over the last year to develop her driving and fitness, and she knew how to make the best out of any car she was handed, regardless of setup. She could run at the front with a well set up car, and she could run at the front with a badly set up car. It didn't make a difference for her to get heavily invested in the exact mechanics of how everything worked. If a car was understeering or wallowing beyond any point of drivability, she would mention it and it would be fixed. To take the example of Suzaku's neuroses, Rakshata Shawla wasn't paid as much as she was for Suzaku to go mucking about in her work, surely?

She shook her head, and settled back into her cockpit as the mechanics around her fettled to the particulars of setting it up for a three lap blast. One to leave the pits, one to do a fast lap approaching the start line at speed and completing the lap at speed, and a third to return to the pit lane. Flicking an eye up to the digital clock on the wall of the garage, it read 03:46. It was not in fact three a.m., rather it was counting down to zero until the end of the session. She took a deep breath. About thirty seconds to ready the car, two minutes to get round to start the flying lap. So long as she started it before the time elapsed, she was allowed a final attempt. She was on provisional pole, but she could do better yet.

She took her left hand off the wheel, and flexed it. She felt the skin, contractured and hardened, stress about the knuckle, and tear underneath the glove. As the blood flowed, it would harden, congeal, and fasten to the glove, sticking to such a point where removing it would rip at the fresh layers of skin that had grown, leaving her hands indefinitely raw.

Why had Naoto said that?

"T minus fifteen seconds, fifteen seconds until deploy!"

She shook her head. Flicking through the various knobs, she did as she was told to ready the cars internal systems, that regulations decreed could not be automatic or remote. Entry RSW to preset position two for the out lap, five for the hot lap. Advance RSW to minus six, delaying ignition, then flick back to neutral for the start of the lap. Energy recovery system to SOC 0 harvest override, flick it back to SOC 4 at the beginning of the lap for maximum energy usage. Kallen had to pay attention to radio chatter over the lap, if she wanted to keep the power unit at full chat.

What did Naoto know that she didn't? There was no way his reaction could be a coincidence… could it? He might, he had known her longer, and at a more adult stage in his life.

"Right, lower the car, check, pitlane clear, radio check, Kallen all clear?"

"Clear radio check Nigel, a-ffirm. Clear on channel C."

Nigel, sat on the pit wall across pit road, extended his arm with an upwards facing thumb, before speaking with a commanding voice into the global channel.

"Release, clear away. Release the tyre blankets, t minus ten seconds."

Immediately, the pit crew took the insulating wraps, ripping them away at the last possible moment to keep as much heat in the carcass as possible when Kallen left the garage. At the same time, the men on the front and rear jacks lowered the car, allowing the wheels to touch the ground and take the weight of the car. Kallen breathed. Last chance for pole.

As the man at the front ran aside to clear a path, Nigel yelled into Kallen's channel.

"Away, two minutes fifteen seconds until the flag. Startup complete, clear pit lane, wave her out John."

Nodding, an engineer stepped out of the garage and, standing between the pit box and pit road, and, head turned down to keep an eye out for oncoming cars, he slowly waved Kallen forward. On the confidence of the man surveying the pit lane, Kallen slowly released the hand clutch, flicked on to the pit limiter, and merged into pit lane. She was away, two minutes till the flag.

Naoto might know more than Kallen did, he had known her longer, and at a more adult stage in his life.

The warm up lap was by the books. Brake bias to the front, fuel mixture all the way to lean, no energy transfer, aggressive braking and accelerating to heat up the tyres and, more importantly, brakes. The car had been unusually sensitive all day, with none of the changes made pursuant to her complaints resolving the inherent lairiness of driving this car. Nevermind that, she breathed in, and held back on the run up to the final corner, to claim a pocket of clean, cool air, and breathed out.

This was it. Every movement had to flow from instinct with no interference, not a foot could be put wrong. It was the 32 fouettés of the third act of Swan Lake, danced on a tarmac stage that was shaking and bouncing and moving underneath her at two hundred miles per hour. The world was watching. Kallen might as well put on a show for them.

She powered out of the corner, slamming into the kerb on the exit of the last corner and flying along the front straight. Her attention was laser focused on the first apex. Trail-brake into the heart of the sun, lift of the brake to restore some lateral bite, only to then leap back onto it to spike the throttle to get the car to dart from right to left, threading the needle and screaming out of the first two corners.

Why was she coming back now? Was that Naoto's problem?

Her helmet buffeting under the force of the air, Kallen locked eyes with the target, a tightening not-quite-hairpin. As she plunged into the corner, she turned across, riding the brakes before taking her left hand off the wheel to twist dial the brake bias forward, advancing the front stopping power as she turned into the apex, letting the rear tyres regain grip slowly as she transitioned from rotating the car in the pre-corner to punching out of it.

All this, the tap dance of the brake, the piano recital of balancing the steering and brake bias, had to be done within to the precision of hundredths of a second, to the nearest fraction of a millimetre with each control. It didn't have to be thought consciously; it was as if a direct cable linked the road to her hands and feet, blasting terabytes of data per thousandth of a second through her brain, which processed it almost instantly, and instinct followed from there, organic commands to refine the brakes, refine the fuel mix, all these instructions rushing in with the volume, intensity and urgency of standing next to a loadspeaker at a heavy metal concert.

What had Naoto not told her? Had he been keeping secrets?

The Kallen swept wide through the first ess, before cutting across from the outside kerb like the sharpest blade to squeeze through the gap and just about reach the final apex after she had slammed the throttle down through the floor and into the mantle. Rise up over the crest, turn back as the road dipped before cutting across to the outside, sustaining vicious g forces on approach to turn eight. Dial the brake bias back rear for more rotation through the corner, rise, swoop, and dive into nine and ten, a vulture winging over before descending.

Naoto turned back to face her, face suddenly twisted like he had received a scornful reprimand. He rose, and angrily rumbled "And you're certain it's her?"

"Yes, Naoto." Kallen nodded. "I know she left, but… she's back now, I know she left us, but… Naoto…"

"Forget it." he hissed, still turned away from Kallen. "Forget her. I'll have no part in it. She made no secret of the fact she'd spoken her peace to me, she said she never wanted to see us again and you know what, who am I to fucking question her on that. She can piss off. You can hang around her if you fancy, just don't go dragging her around me. She had no interest when we were in hell, I have no interest now. And for fucks sake don't bring her back to the flat, there's plenty less dramatic ways to get me out of the place, if you want it that badly."

He sounded on the edge of tears.

Suddenly, Kallen was riding over the outside kerb on approach to the compression of nine and ten, and as she shook back to awareness, she was off the track, and riding through the grit, salt, and marbles that formed the run off area. Kicking up dirt behind her, Kallen had to wrestle the suddenly shifting, dirty surface, and it took all she had to bring it over the kerb and back onto the track.

Kallen silently swore as she accelerated out of the mess. She had lost easily half a second, and while she had been two tenths up before her off, that still meant she would have to gain three tenths to just break even, let alone improve.

The quest would begin at turn eleven, a left hander that opened, before switching back to the right. Cutting the tyres with fierce lock and vicious scrubbing, Kallen dragged the car screaming through the complex. Down a gear, the engine howled in pain, joining the tyres in a makeshift falsetto. The rubber scraped and pleaded as the force of God was put through them, however Kallen, while she did change down to sixth, otherwise kept her foot to the floor, only just about having enough lock to make the turn, as much grief as it put her rubber through.

Brake into turn thirteen. Every downshift was a sledgehammer to the head. Feel the texture of the road scrape and claw at the stressed tyre surface, physically feel the grip just about hang on, like a climbing axe clasping to a cliff face, nails being ripped out. Last corner, brake once, hurl the steering wheel out of the car, dab the brakes a second time, and fire the controls into the horizon. As the prototype popped out of the corner, physics would be all that would determine her time.

As she ran up to the line, she glanced down to the digital readout on the wheel, and as she was met with the chequered flag, she saw the time.

"Purple final sector! Well done, three tenths down to two up, half a second in a single sector! P1, torque one and come back in for the weighing, pick up rubber."

Kallen finally breathed, taking a moment to soothe her hands, soaked in blood as they always were after an intense lap. She'd pulled it back after her stumble, but the stumble…

What had he meant, what was it that Kallen didn't know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be sure to review the story and let me know your thoughts so far! It really means a lot, especially in these times we're in.
> 
> However, I will note parenthetically that this story, set from January 2020 to November 2021, was planned out before Coronavirus became as serious as it has, and so we must, for the sake of this story, imagine a 2020 where Covid-19 didn't happen.
> 
> And mustn't that be a joy in and of itself.


	5. Itchy Necks

"And it's a warm welcome to the top three finishers in this, the first race of the 2020 Formula One World Championship season, the Bahrain Grand Prix. From three different constructors, we have Suzaku Kururugi in third place, Li Xingke in second, and ahead, the winner of the Bahrain Grand Prix of 2020, is the Camelot of Gino Weinberg. Gino, if we can go to you first, did you feel confident going into today, starting in fourth, that you could fight for the win?"

Gino, having just sat into the chair and taken a sip, took a moment to digest the question as his fellow podium finishers sat around him. He was passively grinning madly, however as he understood what was being asked of him, it intensified into an ear to ear grin, and he nodded. He was absolutely delighted. This was supposed to be the year he made a run at the championship, and it had gotten started in the best possible way, just as planned.

"Yes, it was definitely on the cards, at least in my head." Gino acknowledged. "It's obviously not healthy to go into a race having given up on it, but beyond that, I knew… Kallen is a weapon in qualifying, and no matter how much I focused on one lap pace, the best I could start was second. At the same time, the car, I could tell in practice, had enough pace on a long run setup to be above the midfield, and the worst I could start was seventh, no matter how much I biased the car away from quali. From there, I wasn't on pole, but I was close enough, and was able to keep within touching distance, and when the pit stops cycled around, I was in a car that I could still push in without tearing through the tyres. I set up the car to have great race pace and be as stable as possible, and it paid off, I was going as fast as I could, and it was solid as a rock."

"Was this part of your thinking on Saturday?" the journalist asked. "Did you get some insights into the tyres and the way the car drove that you think other might not have?"

"Yeah." Gino nodded, feeling pleased with having gotten the first drop on how to unlock these tyres. "It felt fantastic to be able to race to the lead, overtake my teammate on lap nineteen, was a huge confidence booster that I was the one setting the pace, and I got more and more confident through the stints. I was running at the fastest pace that I could run at and the car was very sharp on the turn-in, I was so worried that I was gonna spin, especially in esses of five six and seven. So I had to make sure I didn't make any mistakes, but the car was super solid and reassuring."

The journalist nodded, and continued "This win puts you into the lead of the championship, does that also give you a lot of confidence?"

"Oh absolutely." Gino smiled. "Of course this is the beginning, but if we can build up a bit of momentum I think we're in great shape, I'm driving as good as I ever have. I'll definitely be going like hell this year."

It just felt so fantastic. It was as if he had driven not only through the front of the pack, but through much of his malaise, and in blasting across a track, he was blasting through a mental wall of ambition. He felt that he had shed twenty kilograms, he could do anything.

The journalist, however, was finished with him, and moved along to Xingke, who was gulping down his water by the bucketful.

"Xingke, on the podium you looked absolutely exhausted. Are you feeling all good now?"

The Luoyang driver nodded, taking a break from trying to channel the entire Persian Gulf down his throat, and answered "Yes, I am feeling alright now. A couple of minutes ago it was different. This is definitely a very intense race, you had to go absolutely flat out. These guys played some brilliant tactics, of course, the fault, the problem is with us, they did a good job and they won the race. Obviously for me it was… pushing as I could and trying to overtake Kallen, who naturally put up more of a fight to me than to Gino. Her car wasn't that fast, in the… high speed corners, it sort of wallowed a bit, but she would always have a good brake through the slow corners to accelerate at the exit out, I had to wait for her tyres to wear. Thankfully, the difference in pace between tyres wasn't that severe, and so more stops didn't gain her as much time as it might have done last year, where a soft tyre was however many seconds faster than a hard."

"Do you think she's going to have a hard time defending her championship?"

Xingke cheekily glanced aside to Gino, and, smirking, commented "Well, that's the plan. I came close last year, don't plan on doing that again."

Gino returned the glance. He agreed in part with the Chinese pilot; he had also come close last year, and had gained a new grit to fight back, except, at the end of the year, Gino was no more enthused to see Xingke lift the trophy than Kallen. Only Gino.

He would fight for only himself.

* * *

_Gino Weinberg – 25 (1 win)_

_Li Xingke – 18_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 15_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 12_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 10_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 8_

* * *

This he would do as the first defined leg of the season began in Brazil, covering the Americas from south to north to avoid the early spring snows of Montreal.

Horrendous weather on Saturday led to qualifying being halted after Q1, with qualifying resuming Sunday, where no one was shocked that Kallen Kōzuki took her 20th pole position, bumping her up to joint fourteenth in the tally of most poles by a single driver in her number 11 Camelot RPI-20 Lancashire with teammate Gino lining up directly behind her in third. It was Naoto that delivered the unexpected, completing the sibling front row, followed by Li Xingke in fourth who outqualified his teammate Rolo Lamperouge, leaving Suzaku Kururugi with the wooden spoon of the top runners.

It would not last; while Naoto would make an excellent getaway, Kallen would not. Momentarily istracted, she released the clutch too lightly, and allowed the anti-stall to kick in. From the head of the grid she was swallowed up immediately, falling to twelfth by the end of the first lap with her careless error. She would fight back to finish in fourth, but only due to Suzaku having the good graces to suffer an engine failure and incur a safety car, allowing Kallen to make some recovery in spite of her having to go through the field in a display that was altogether less inspired than her rise through the field in the previous years race in Brazil.

The race at the head of the field was a battle for between the two stopping Camelot of Gino and the Schwarzenritter of Li Xingke, who made only a single visit to the blue suited engineers for a change of boots. It ultimately came down to how much the Chinese pilot could slow Gino in the middle stint before he was inevitably overtaken on the softer tyres, and unfortunately the answer was not enough, as after his second stop, Gino exited close enough behind Xingke to hunt down and eventually, in a daring pass on the penultimate lap, seize the lead, holding it to secure Gino's second straight win, while Xingke had to settle for another second place. Rolo completed what was a double podium for the British-turned-Sino-French outfit, however reports indicated frustration from inside the Schwarzenritter camp, with a directive from the top to bring a car to Mexico, a unique departure to the first two tracks with dramatically lower air pressure and a greater dependence on downforce, that could win.

* * *

_Gino Weinberg – 50 (2 wins)_

_Li Xingke – 36_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 25_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 24_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 18_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 15_

* * *

This they did, as in Mexico the Weinberg streak was broken, and Xingke got his first win of the season, and the sixth of his Formula One career.

This did not appear to be a guaranteed thing at the start of the weekend, particularly in light of Gino's winning streak, however on Friday, eyebrows were raised around the paddock when the Briton slammed into a wall jutting off from the exit of the last corner in a bizarre incident that caused the session to be red flagged. When eventually extracted from the car, Gino reported disorientation, and he was forced to sit out the second session of practice. He was deemed fit to qualify and race, however his weekend only got worse and worse, as during the second session of the Saturday Qualifying, he was unable to make a run, with a burst coolant hose rendering the car immobile. Xingke broke Kallen's streak of poles, and was uncontested through the race, with Kallen unable to live with the Schwarzenritters blistering pace, with the new upgrades dedicated for the unique circuit. Even with a pair of safety cars to recover the crashed car of Shinichiro Tamaki and the malfunctioning car of Claudio Darlton, Li Xingke was untouchable, and sealed twenty-five points for Schwarzenritter with ease.

The safety cars on the other hand were a godsend for Gino, who made the gruelling climb from fifteenth to second over the length of the two hour race managing to sneak both of his pit stops into the safety car periods, saving over twenty seconds against the rest of the grid that missed the gap. Behind Xingke, Kallen was initially able to keep pace with the fellow Asian, sitting a consistent second behind the leader, however on lap twenty-one Kallen's car, already dealing with intense tyre wear and in a lapse of concentration on her part, snapped out of control, span off the kerb of turn two, pirouetting across the grass runoff and only just avoiding the barriers. Gino, followed by Rolo and Suzaku had all overtaken her by the time she made it back onto the circuit, and she could only watch as they they advanced out of Kallen's sight, and by that time her tyres were already worn to the canvas. Once ahead of Kallen, the former Schwarzenritter teammates kept together for the length of the race and providing the most entertaining racing the Grand Prix offered, each one drafting off the hole the other punched in the air and slingshotting past, lap after lap.

The duelling pair of Suzaku and Rolo avoided any troubles, and maintained second and third positions until Gino was able to overcut them with the second safety car, by which time they were able to hold securely onto third and fourth, while Kallen, who made a humiliating five stops, had to settle for fifth. Ultimately, after a battle that spanned the length of the race, it was Rolo that got the upper hand, daringly striking up Suzaku's inside into the slow, finnicky stadium complex and holding the outside through the hair raising final corner, winning by barely three hundredths of a second as Suzaku, though travelling a shorter distance around the corner, had trouble applying the throttle under lateral load. Kallen was left to angrily stew over what might have been had it not been for her spin in a moment of lapse down in fifth.

* * *

_Gino Weinberg – 68 (2 wins)_

_Li Xingke – 61 (1 win)_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 40_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 34_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 27_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 26_

* * *

Heading further north, the trucks and lorries did not stop at Texas, instead ploughing through flyover country up to Marion County, Indiana, for a long awaited reunion. Now wrestled out of the control of the insular family that had run the track as an exclusive oval since 1944, the Brickyard opened its doors for the first Formula One race since 2007, which had only run for six years after a fifty year gap.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, built in 1909, was back, and the new owners were sparing no expense in rejuvenating the facility, outbidding the Texan Circuit of the Americas as soon as the contract was out, and sprucing up the venue for a welcome reunion. As much as COTA felt like they had got the short end of the stick the cars would nonetheless be turning 73 laps of the Indy road course, which ran clockwise, joining the banked ring at oval turn two, riding back at full speed through the cambered oval turn one, and braking just before oval turn four to go back into the infield. With 190,000 in attendance, Charles for one certainly didn't feel as if he had got any sort of short end, and the first superspeedway was an incredibly anticipated addition to the calendar.

Kallen made it three pole positions in four races, not pleased with having lost pole two weeks ago at Mexico. Given that few others had either experience with the track or the sort of reckless abandon that allowed one to push the mechanical limits of a track that had hard, unforgiving walls worthy of stock car racing, few seriously contested her for the lead qualifying spot, especially given her recent record in the race of falling off the pace. Indeed, it almost devalued the achievement of racking up pole positions, ordinarily admirable statements of speed, something Kallen dearly loved, given that most of the competition had thrown in the towel.

She had spent the previous two weeks in intense sessions with Euphemia to try and get her head back together, punctuated only by some catch-up talk with her mother. She was growing more and more frustrated after a pair of lapses in focus culminated in her not having yet earned a podium in her championship defence campaign. This was compounded by this impossible car, which seemed to respond in contradictory ways to Kallen's requested adjustments, with any attempt to solve a problem in how it handled introducing two others, and, more frustratingly, Gino seemed to be getting on without issue. While she was unable to consistently avert her suddenly frequent moments of distraction, she spent many hours trying to glean techniques off of Euphemia to mitigate the effects of at least her distractions.

Kallen would never get to see the results of this experiment, however, as on the parade lap her engine would begin to billow out white smoke, the power unit dramatically expiring with all the subtlety of a volcano's ash cloud, and with about the same volume of gas, smoke, soot, and steam, thick enough to get lost in. As much as she wailed against the steering wheel, hitting it repeatedly with the heels of her hands in fury, it didn't halt the reality that the polesitter would not turn a lap in anger in the race where the home of the Indianapolis 500 was returning to the calendar.

The race, however, would begin anyway, with the first spot on the grid vacated, and off the line, Suzaku rocketed from his qualifying position of fifth-turned-fourth all the way up to the lead, with Naoto hopping from fourth-turned-third to second. For about a half hour, Rebellion, who had been having a lacklustre start to the season with only one podium so far in the year in the opening race, led the race one-two.

The world may never have known how much faster they could have been, however. Naoto, behind on softer tyres, was faster than his teammate Suzaku in the lead, but the rural athlete was ruthless in defending from the urban one, even to the point where it lost them both several tenths per lap. For eight laps the elder Kōzuki stalked Kururugi, clearly on the better tyres, repeatedly asking if he could pass and receiving no reply. From what it appeared, Naoto was allowed to fight, but the strategy team would not instruct Suzaku to move aside, the worst of both worlds, as neither one could dedicate their full attention to putting in enough good laps in clean air to pull away, instead bickering fruitlessly and ultimately counterproductively.

This ended when Xingke pitted on Lap 19, coming out in clear air. Suzaku pitted a lap later and fell victim to Xingke's brutal pace on new tyres – the Chinese driver ripped off a series of fast laps and took the lead while the Rebellion got new tires. Naoto pitted on the next lap, and with worn tyres was unable to effect the overcut.

While all this was happening, Gino was pacing himself, going long on the first stint to take an aggressive tack in the second stint. As soon as he stopped onto the softer rubber, much of his fuel having burned off, Gino put the hammer down, setting a series of fastest laps and daringly passing both Rebellions, and pursuing the leading Schwarzenritter. With a ferocious and physical intensity Xingke couldn't match, Gino quickly was within a second of Xingke however the pilot was able to position his car in the perfect way to ward off possible overtaking events, holding up the Briton behind him.

All of this changed on lap forty-two.

Gino, having been already stung in the first bout of the day, returned for more out of the penultimate turn, surging with a fierce bounce out of the acceleration zone, having conserved his ERS and fuel to burst out of the penultimate turn with the fuel running rich and the energy at maximum deployment. With greater acceleration, Gino stuck around the outside of Xingke, who was hugging the kerb like it was his grandmother.

Attempting to hold the outside line, Gino kept his throttle pinned, and like many at Indianapolis before him, overstepped the limit as he tried to go two wide through oval turn one, and straightlined towards the exit barrier, smashing into the concrete wall at over a hundred and sixty miles per hour, causing the session to be put under a prolonged safety car as Gino was lifted from his car and brought to the infield medical centre. On the restart, Xingke pulled away, however Suzaku was pounced upon by Naoto, before, after two laps, they were both swallowed up by Rolo, with Schwarzenritter holding onto the 1-2 until the chequered flag, with Naoto holding off Suzaku to finish a deserved podium. Fittingly for the return race of the venue, the parties went on until well into the small hours, with Xingke smirking as the team went into an hours long frenzy at having taken a lead in the drivers championship and a convincing lead in the constructors championship.

* * *

_Li Xingke – 86 (2 wins)_

_Gino Weinberg – 68 (2 wins)_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 50_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 41_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 39_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 34_

* * *

Gino didn't make it through his hit into the wall unscathed; the hundred-and-sixty-mile-per-hour slam into the SAFER barrier at his third quarter, reminiscent of Naoto's crash at Japan in 2017. Thankfully, his legs, in no short part thanks to improved safety regulations in the wake of what had happened three years ago, he had been able to hobble away from the wreck under his own power, legs intact. However, once he was brought to the infield care centre, it was revealed he had cracked two ribs, though after a physical examination, he was deemed fit to race within two weeks.

By this stage, Kallen was at the end of her tether, however her American nightmare was nearly at an end, as the final leg of the stint in the New World came in Montreal Canada, and sure enough, it was as miserable as any other of her races in the new decade had been so far, at least to start. Certainly, spinning in practice hardly put her in the best of moods, and she was bullish and belligerent all the way up until Sunday. She didn't even get pole, losing out to Xingke and starting P2.

An anonymous locker down in the Camelot changing room didn't survive the night.

However, points were paid on the Sunday, and while Kallen did not gain from the start, she didn't lose, and kept with Xingke for the opening phase of the race. For a time, Kallen was viscerally immersed in the racing, as she diced with the Chinese pilot, pushing just half a second behind him, and quickly she fell into a satisfying rhythm of speed. In fact, it was as she was able to string together a series of fast laps in succession, that she came to a conclusion.

Xingke was really bloody fast.

It was perhaps an obvious conclusion, given that he was the championship leader who had won more races in the last season than anyone else, now paired in if not the fastest car, the second fastest car. He had more trophies in more competitions than anyone currently racing.

But he was not invulnerable. Kallen knew this more than anyone, and knew exactly how to turn the heat up under his feet. He could burn like the brightest star, but he would burn half as long, and if Kallen applied prolonged pressure, his stamina would fade. His heath wouldn't allow him to push forever, and Kallen had been training her stamina.

And it would have worked had it not been for Gino.

The Briton had been left behind by Kallen and Xingke's cat and mouse act, and with his teammate looking to have recovered some consistency and stability after a lacklustre start to the season, the pressure was on for Gino.

The leading pair were the first to pit, with Kallen trying to get an undercut, only to be denied by a fierce in lap by Xingke. In an attempt to overcut the pair of them while their tyres were cold, Gino put the hammer down, and fiercely pushed as hard as he could, harder than he ever had in his F1 career to seize this chance.

However, as in Indianapolis his eagerness would outstretch his ability, and as he tried to speed through the final chicane, he broke too little and turned too fast, bouncing off the second apex kerb and flying into the wall of champions at breakneck speed, compressing at the right hand front corner and deep into the frame, almost reaching the cockpit. Another safety car was required to excavate him, and bring him to St Mary's Hospital for inspection, particularly in light of his earlier pair of crashes at Mexico in practice, and Indianapolis in the race. It was revealed he had compounded his cracked ribs into a bruised lung.

While all wished him well, one man was doing a good bit more than hoping he was in good health, and was currently engaged in gracious exalting, and that man was Suzaku Kururugi, who had stayed out while Kallen and Xingke pitted for fresh tyres, and was now able to pit while the pack was slowed, and leapfrog ahead of them. With tyres that were ten laps younger in conjunction with track position, his reign over the rest of the race was unassailable in an unexpected development that saw Rebellion hold things together to seal an unexpected win.

If Suzaku was singing Gino's praises from inside the cockpit, Kallen was cursing him, as her strategy of wearing out the leader was predicated on sustained, prolonged pressure that would hopefully result in him tiring and flagging. This safety car gave Xingke four laps at a trundling pace to recover his breath and his strength, ruining any chance she had of striking.

For all his weakening strength, Xingke was an endurance racer, and knew how to pace himself while keeping position. Gino, his closest competition, was out, and he was in second. There was no need to risk an easy podium in a race that Gino would not finish to finish a bit higher.

And so, to Kallen's irritation, Xingke refused to be moved no matter how much Kallen pressed her bloody hands into the wheels to try and wrestle the octopus, and came home a comfortable, but narrow, second place, with Kallen taking her first podium of the season.

* * *

_Li Xingke – 104 (2 wins)_

_Gino Weinberg – 68 (2 wins)_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 64 (1 win)_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 60_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 53_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 49_

* * *

It was a welcome development, however the frustrations remained. Gino would take a week to get back to racing fitness, and only passed a physical just in time for the first session of practice, which meant that the pressure had mounted on Camelots only, and ailing driver. Her spin in Canada had been in practice, but it had still been the product of a momentary lapse in concentration, a moment of distraction.

For Kallen, this was a particular concern, given the way she navigated the car. In cars that were so nervous that hitting any input wrong when entering or exiting any corner could cause a spin, rapid and precise feathering the throttle and manipulation of the wheel to induce oversteer in the car to get it to round corners could lead to quicker cornering, but it demanded complete attention and inputs within hundredths of seconds. She couldn't undertake this technique with any confidence if she couldn't be certain that her focus would remain absolute.

The need for concentration and precision to avoid even the slightest error was made even more acute given the fact that the American season was over, and the European was beginning, and beginning at the most challenging track; Monaco.


	6. Climb Dance

The Francophone sphereling, of course, was by no means unknown to either Lelouch Lamperouge, who had grown up less than an hour west of the tax haven and had scored one of his only three victories in Formula One around the gilded streets, or Li Xingke, who had had victory snatched away from him the previous year by one Kallen Kozuki who had attempted an audacious two stop strategy and had turned more laps around the Circuit de la Sarthe in Pays de la Loire, seven hundred kilometers to the north west of the Principality, than he had had hot dinners. All this was in addition to the context of Schwarzenritter's previous incarnation Rosenberg having won the 2017 race with Suzaku Kururugi.

It might have done to say that they had history around those streets.

However the work of historians was not a hasty or unnecessarily urgent one, and with a two week break between Montreal and Monte Carlo, the Schwarzenritter team arrived in France in good spirits, having plenty of time to set up operations for the European leg of the season.

As the crew readied themselves for a return to the original street circuit, Lelouch was pleased enough. They led the drivers championship by thirty-six points and the constructors by fifty-one points, Asplund was ticking away with a reassuring happiness, and Lelouch was keeping all the sponsors onboard, which was important as the school was built.

The school, that Xingke had had written into his contract, or at least the construction thereof, had broken ground, with a site having been chosen west of Jinhua, Zhejiang, with aid being provided by local governance in exchange for clearing the local wetland and putting the waterlogged area to some kind of use. While Lelouch had not yet been able to visit it, he had been privy to a series of video calls at and about the grounds, and he was pleased. The main facility was to be contained within a four-point-two kilometer trioval, with housing, teaching blocks, training buildings, and recreational facilities spread across the infield, planned just so to allow for an interior road course with multiple configurations for training and testing, though there would likely need to be more facilities outside the superspeedway that encompassed the main grounds of the school.

But it would be a while before it held students, and far longer before it produced the sorts of talents that Lelouch would need to fuel the expansion of Schwarzenritter into a genuine force in global motorsports. For now, the concern lay in tackling the Monaco streets.

"It's a strategy we used at Le Mans. If we have a hare run out front during the race and set purple laps, it can tempt some others into pushing too hard to keep up and ruin their race. You... can, pass around Monaco, in theory, in the same way that you can in theory perform heart surgery with a claymore, it's just not going to be pretty and it's not going to be easy. If we make the hare draw people into a strategy where they pit early into traffic, the person behind the hare, who was conserving tyres, will be in clean air and able to pull an overcut as the pack stretches apart."

Lelouch, from the back of the room, smiled, as Xingke laid out his plan for the race. He had taken well to the team after Lelouch had given him the little bit of encouragement, sealing two wins and being in a secure lead in the championship race. Further, he had proven to be everything the Frenchman had hoped he would in a less quantifiable dimension. A good driver that engaged with the team could motivate them, and elevate them to new heights, inspire them to work together more efficiently around their personality. And now, watching him draw in the whole room to his project, to his vision, Lelouch understood why Xingke had won as many endurance races as he had, he was brilliant at ginning up a room to follow him to war. For what Lelouch had planned, Xingke seemed to be an ideal partner, getting the team motivated and ambitious, as he was no longer trying to performatively replicate his younger, quieter self. He was now confident that it was the present him that was desired, was significantly more comfortable in and around the team, spurring it on and encouraging it.

It perhaps also gave some insight into Suzaku's success, as Lelouch now realised that the Japanese pilot had been a structurally integral part of the team's success. To get the team to work, it needed a charismatic, strong driver at its centre as much as a strong executive at its top.

"Why can't the hare just go and win? If they pull a big enough gap, they might be able to pull out enough of a gap to pit and stay in the lead, especially if the driver behind them is backing up the field."

The question came from Rolo, who looked anxious at the implication that he was likely to be the hare. Lelouch sighed, as the team, silently, looked around at each other. After a moment, he took a breath as he nodded his head forward, and stepping out from leaning against the wall behind the table, cleared his throat to get the attention back from Rolo.

Rolo's head turned from Xingke to Lelouch, who then spoke.

"Doing that would have the hare pit too early to have built that gap, and even if they had, they would have too far to go on a single set of tyres. We'd have to have someone push out ahead, but they wouldn't be the ones who would win."

Rolo, whose eyes were locked with his brothers, looked hurt, which did make Lelouch sting a little, however he bit his lip. Lelouch could see it, as Rolo's eyebrows anxiously pressed in towards his nose, uncertain and deeply concerned for his position within the team. It wasn't quite looking into a mirror as much as looking into a time hole, a view of himself five years ago. It was in a way disappointing that he had transmitted down his own anxieties, however, for now at least, Lelouch knew that for as good a driver as Rolo was, he was not able to lead. Perhaps one day he would be. Perhaps one day he would be forced to be. But for now, Xingke was the one taking the initiative.

After a pause, Lelouch, stepping back towards the table the crew were gathered around, added "As well, the hare runs a much higher risk of clanging into a wall or crashing with how hard they're pushing, we can't invest our strategy into the riskiest component. Xingke can attest to that."

Rolo jerked his head down and to the side, biting his lip in turn. After a moment, Rolo nodded, and said "Alright."

Lelouch nodded. "Alright. I think that's good. You were all fantastic, let's pick this up tomorrow."

"Aye, we got a good bit done today. Get some rest, busy day tomorrow." Lloyd agreed.

"Indeed." Lelouch nodded. "Well done everyone, let's keep our momentum up. V.V, I'll forward you the new registrations, we need to requisition some new stuff to handle the updated interface. Cheers everyone, have a good sleep, we're beginning the setup simulation tomorrow, if we get the whole program done by the close of business we're all having a round on me."

"Reuben left another voicemail Lelouch." V.V replied.

Lelouch sighed. Of course he had. Shaking his head, he could only reply "Tell him to meet me on Friday, I'll have somewhere booked and… yeah, hopefully we'll be able to sort something. I don't know what more I can do for him than I am doing."

Reuben Ashford was up until 2018 one of only two privateer entries in Formula One, running a team as a start up out of what had once been a shed, with no manufacturer support. Lloyd going bust had left Reuben the last man standing, a man seemingly out of time. Lelouch, possibly out of some gratitude for having been the one to give the Frenchman his chance, would have hated to see him fall, the last capstone from a pre-corporate era before wind tunnels and computers allowed teams to spend their way into a race-winning car, when ingenuity and lateral thinking defined success.

Lelouch grimaced. Reuben Ashford possibly going bust meant nothing good.

The crowd behind Lelouch by this point had begun grabbing their coats and filing out, as Lelouch was planning to, however as he tried to leverage his sleeve through his limp arm, he heard someone step towards him he saw Rolo, looking down trying to say something.

"Lelouch..." he began, before looking up and continuing with some resolution. "I'm going to stay on the sim for a while, I want to really try and get better for the weekend."

Lelouch turned, and silently grimaced. What could he say? Lelouch could guess at what Rolo's thought process was, that the reason Xingke's was the hare was that Xingke was simply faster, and that if Rolo became faster then Lelouch would favour him.

His lips pursed. Rolo was wrong, misunderstanding his brothers intention, but Lelouch was uncertain as to what to say. Rolo was not ready to lead a team, he wasn't old or mature enough, enough of a figure to rally around.

With time, Lelouch reminded himself. Rolo was only in his second year, and with the ability to learn underneath the joint most decorated driver in endurance racing history, his projection only went in one direction, and that was up. If he could be patient, if he could learn, great things awaited him that never awaited Lelouch.

And Lelouch couldn't wait to see it.

But that was for the future, and in the present Rolo was still stood ahead of him trying to, in his mind, get in his good graces, and insofar as Rolo wanted to try and perfect Monaco, Lelouch was not exactly going to disabuse him of that notion.

"Alright." Lelouch nodded. "Lloyd, you're staying here yea?"

Poking his head up from his coat, Lloyd, on the other side of the room, nodded "Aye."

"Make sure he's off it before midnight, we can't work with a zombie" Lelouch gestured. "Other than that, load up the rig in the back and let him have a spin. It's an intense track, the more practice the better."

Lloyd nodded, before asking "What about you?"

"I'm heading back to the house."

Rolo blinked before reminding him "You can't drive, you eejit."

"That's true." Lelouch admitted, embarrassed at only just then realising that it was twenty kilometers up the hill to Belvédère. "I'll probably call-"

"Here, I'll drive." Xingke piped up. "It's not too far."

Lelouch blinked, and asked "You have a French license?"

"Chinese license is valid so long as I have an IDP, got it as soon as I knew I was going to be spending more time in Europe." Xingke shrugged. "My car's two streets down."

"Fantastic, cheers for the lift." Lelouch nodded, turning away from Rolo. "See you all tomorrow, you're really putting in the work, it'll pay off on Sunday."

A round of agreements chorused through the room, as Lelouch followed Xingke down to the lift and out the back of the building. Out the lobby, and down the pavement towards the car park block.

"It's awful cold out tonight for being May."

The comment came from Xingke, who promptly stepped into the concrete building, about half full, and through to his car, a modest sports car with not too much power, but decent handling. It was probably the right vehicle for the hills back to Lelouch's apartment, as much as the winding path tempted one to push a car through the sweeping curves; not fast enough to get you in any serious danger, but enough traction to elicit that sparkle of excitement in your stomach.

"Thanks again for the lift." Lelouch nodded, as he did up his seatbelt.

"It's no hassle." Xingke nonchalantly replied. "They're nice roads anyway, can enjoy the car."

Lelouch agreed. The team were set up in Sospel, with his house being up to the north west, in Saint-Julien, with the road in between being the venue for the Col De Turini stage of the Monte Carlo Rally. Back when he could drive, he enjoyed taking his peppy cars up and down this mountain, enjoying the sensations that came through the tyres, through the seat, through the wheel. Xingke enjoyed it too, as Lelouch felt the car's speed slowly ramp up in his gut, with the Chinese pilot taking each successive corner with more of a bite, and sure enough, as the Frenchman looked aside, a grin had grown on his face.

Lelouch could hardly not pitch in and make the drive a little more satisfying.

"Notes are six slight, one severe. Four right into six left over bump, don't cut, seventy meters into two left, don't cut."

Xingke's grin grew into a full smile, as Lelouch took over the role of reciting his mental pacenotes, fashioning his limited Chinese vocabulary into a makeshift set of directions, substituting words here and there for more basic equivalents that Lelouch could reflexively reach for. With fresh confidence in the no-longer-unknown road ahead, Xingke began to properly stretch the limits of the tyres, leaving them squealing all the way up the mountain as Lelouch felt, for the first time in a long time, excited at the sensation of speed, even if he wasn't the one driving, the G forces pulling at his stomach and neck in a familiar, almost comforting way. Lelouch guided Xingke up the hill, feeling the exhilaration rise through his chest as Xingke pushed his chassis closer to the edge of control, though never moving an inch beyond it.

With Lelouch fluidly reciting the direction and obstacles of the road and Xingke now ragging the coupe for all it was worth, they made short work of the winding switchback roads, and just as dusk turned to night they had arrived. The lights on the section to the right were out, which meant Nunnally was asleep, and so as a final instruction, Lelouch urged Xingke to turn the engine off and roll to a stop with the clutch.

As soon as the car came to rest, the pair each caught their breath, before smiling. Lelouch had never been rallying, but being Xingke's co driver up through the narrow, twisty roads with a rock face on one side and a thousand foot drop on the other as the Chinese pilot wrestled the car along Mont Bego, the west face of the Alps, had him smiling from ear to ear.

He had missed this.

Xingke was certainly no less enthused, grinning like a madman as he caught his breath. After a moment however, he turned and burst into a fit of coughs to Lelouch's sudden surprise. Lelouch sat in silence until the Chinese pilots contorted form had convulsed for a moment too long and his face distorted in shock, but just then Xingke's throat finally cleared, and after another moment of pause, he turned back towards the Frenchman with a big smile.

"That was fantastic." he laughed. "It's a good job all the words you need for directions are in HSK1 or we'd have been screwed."

Lelouch blinked, and asked "Are you alright?"

He nodded, and replied "Just needed a moment. Nothing to worry about."

In spite of Lelouch staring in terror for a few moments, Xingke continued unperturbed, as if trying consciously to move past it, to distract, "So here we are."

Lelouch blinked, and simply asked "Xingke?"

Xingke simply replied with a simple "Yeah?"

Lelouch frowned. It was probably nothing, but he didn't want to take the chance.

"Here, don't drive back." he insisted. "I'll need someone to drive me down tomorrow morning anyway."

Xingke hesitated, but ultimately had to get out of the car to help Lelouch out of the low slung cabin, and once they were both stood outside the apartment complex, it wasn't too hard to convince Xingke to call it a night. As they walked out of the gravel and into the brick array of buildings littered around in a set of four squares, Xingke sniffed, and looked up at the night, mountains and trees surrounding the area like a blanket.

"It's a very pretty place."

Lelouch looked up and around. He never paid much attention to it, but he supposed it wasn't wrong. The hills were very relaxing, though whether that was the product of them being the only place he had ever lived he didn't know. He shrugged, and looked back down.

"Was thankfully able to start renting a few years ago, after a good while working out of a caravan." Lelouch nodded, as he fumbled for his keys. "Had to change from a fourth floor apartment to a ground floor one in 2019 when I couldn't walk, but it's been home."

After a moment, he was able to unlock the door and step inside. Sure enough, Nunnally lay asleep on the couch, however there was another one at the side of the room that extended into a makeshift bed with the pull of a lever. As Xingke sat down, Lelouch asked quietly "Do you need a drink or anything?"

Xingke nodded, saying "If you wouldn't mind."

Lelouch went inside to grab some water, before returning to place it on the coffee table.

"Thank you." Xingke nodded as Lelouch, head pounding in the background, had a drink himself. After a pause, Xingke gestured ahead. "Is that your sister?"

"Aye." Lelouch confirmed, loosening his leg brace to slowly descend into a seated position.

Xingke paused, eyebrows furrowed, to drink, before commenting "You've been raising her and Rolo for a while on your own, huh."

Lelouch nodded, before admitting "We had help… Suzaku was always good to have around."

Reluctant to admit it. Xingke looked down contemplatively, which caused Lelouch to shift uncertainly. Rolo and Nunnally were his responsibility, had been for years. He had long acknowledged that he would never have in any sense a normal childhood, and he had long come to terms with that, accepted the maladjusted tendencies that accompanied it as a natural consequence of his success, a necessary tradeoff for his survival. Even here, his alerts pricked up at the very mention of his own childhood. He couldn't be vulnerable, vulnerability could be exploited, and Rolo and Nunnally would be the ones to pay for Lelouch's mistakes.

But Xingke was no threat.

"You've done a good job to have made it as far as you have, and brought them along with you." Xingke nodded softly. "You should be proud."

Had he? They were all alive, in mostly good health, he supposed, but Lelouch, as grand in his ambitions as he was fleeting in his commitments, was still unsatisfied that he wasn't able to do more, that he was himself crippled, reliant on others, that his help was dependant on the help of others. More vulnerability. Even as he sat in a position of relative security, the head of an entire racing team, he could never, even if he sat on a golden throne surrounded by a thousand guards, feel secure. Insecurity was simply the state of nature. He would always be an outsider, a stranger. It was just his personality to be forever in a state of adaptive flux, wherever the wind blew, wherever it seemed most convenient to set up camp for the night, whichever crack in the wall it seemed safest to slither into.

Although Xingke certainly didn't seem to be untrustworthy. Perhaps it could be a start.

"Thanks." Lelouch finally admitted, perhaps lacking the emotional intelligence to engage further with the point. Xingke didn't seem to mind, and, tiredly, and slowly, spoke again.

"I'm really... glad. I'm glad you're the one, that's administering the whole project, with the school. I wasn't sure... that I would get a chance, to make it happen. I'm glad I have."

What could he say? Certainly not the truth, by no means the truth. Never the truth.

What was the truth? He didn't quite know. Certainly, there was a veneer of Lelouch's lizard brain that noted that Xingke was useful. He could be a figure, a personality for the team to rally around like a Cornelia McGlynn or a Kallen Kōzuki, he could give it direction in its infancy, and all of this was to leave out his incredible skill as a driver, even in his age and ill health. Even building the school, Lelouch knew what it got him in a pragmatic. It would earn him an unparalleled flow of talent that could be trained and fostered in dedicated facilities to work with and within the team. It was, in a way, the most typically Lamperougian, calculating thing he could have done, if it was for that reason.

Was it done for that reason?

After a moment, he settled on an answer, and replied to Xingke "We made a deal. I don't intend to let my side down."

He didn't know if he was telling the truth. Probably not.

Xingke sat in sudden silence, and for reasons Lelouch couldn't quite understand, an air of awkwardness fell over the room.

Nothing more was said before Lelouch fell asleep, followed shortly by Xingke.


	7. Morton's Fork

"How'd it go?"

Kasumi asked this with a waving hand as her daughter walked down the steps. Kallen had to stop to deposit a cloth into a waste bin, having cleared up the clotting on her the surface of her hands in the bathroom. As she arrived at where Kasumi was sat, she sighed, and recounted what Euphemia had told her.

"Not bad. Apparently I'm experiencing acute stress."

Kasumi blinked, and asked "What's that?"

Kallen went to answer, however she had to take a moment to sneeze, turning away to pause in her moment of charge. If nothing else, this proved it; she was back in Britain, and sure enough, she had come down with a cold.

With a two week gap between Montreal and Monte Carlo, everyone at the English based teams laid over for a while in the British motorsports belt, with the Japanese teams of Rebellion and Denso, and the French Schwarzenritter team heading straight to France. This was at least a chance for more extensive therapies with Euphemia, with more of the pink haired woman's amenities on hand to help with the process.

And then, of course, Kallen could bring Kasumi to more new places, while catching her up on how Kallen had gotten on in her absence, though now all she could report was bad news.

"Experiencing stress in flashes, basically." Kallen explained, audibly tired "Apparently I'm more at risk from what I was going through last year, the sort of numbness and dissociation I was feeling after Tohdoh got burned, I didn't understand it at the time but it was… I knew it at the time, I felt it seeing his… his face bloody melted off but it wasn't… it didn't settle, seeing him like that and carrying him out. Thing is, it usually involves stuff that's happened more recently, from, like important events, both positive and negative, that require significant adjustment."

Kallen sighed and shrugged to conclude her uncertain point, before Kasumi suggested "Maybe you're getting too wound up in this racing thing…"

"No, I think…" Kallen replied, brusquely, shaking her head before pausing, thoughtfully. "Normally driving can take me out of things, normally that is the thing where I can find a bit of peace. When I'm sitting on eight thousand revs, that's normally where I'm at peace, where I literally can't think about anything else because I'm so immersed in it. It's my job, but it's also my escape in a lot of ways. Sometimes it feels like I can only be comfortable if I'm in motion, movement and panic is a sort of tranquillity, you can't think about anything else.

Kasumi pursed her lips, before asking "Is it the fact that you're falling behind that's stressing you out?"

Kallen frowned, and mused "Maybe? I'm not sure. It started… in Mexico, was the first big off, even in Bahrain I got a distraction in qualifying, and then I got… at Brazil, was uncertain at the lights. It's strange."

"I mean…" Kasumi gestured. "You were clearly frustrated, at Indianapolis and Canada. You were attacking that steering wheel when you broke down, and don't think I didn't hear about that foot locker."

Kallen looked aside, ashamed that Kasumi knew about that, before Kasumi continued "It's just that that does make you look like a bit of a bad loser. You should be more gracious."

The driver grimaced. Her mother wasn't wrong, in her analysis of Kallen. Perhaps it was her familiarity, but it made it no less uncomfortable to hear. Still belligerent, even to her mother, Kallen replied, somewhat irked "I guess? Yeah, I'm what you might call a bad loser. Why should I lie? I'm not in F1 because I'm good at losing, people didn't go 'Gee, that lass is just so amazing at losing, let's hire her.' I'm not paid to lose well, I'm paid to win, and I get pissed when I'm not able to do that. I don't think it's frankly very honest for me to act as if I'm not upset, or annoyed when a race goes bad and I'm in an awful mood. If you don't care, if you shrug it off, if you're not here to be the fastest, I'm not sure I respect… if you don't care if you lose, then retire. Go home. We play to win… we all know that."

Xingke knew that.

Kasumi suddenly looked put off, and replied hesitatingly "You're very passionate."

Apologetically, Kallen shook her head and replied "I'd race you on foot to the bottom of a street. I don't like to go slowly, I don't like to lose."

"I understand. Of course, do everything you can to win, don't compromise, fight with everything you have." Kasumi affirmed. "But don't take it out on the people around you. People can feel put off by some of your… intensity."

Suddenly alert, Kallen looked up, stunned, and asked "Really? Have you heard anything?"

"I don't know." Kasumi admitted. "But I wouldn't want to risk it. It's not you, I know that. You're better than that, I've seen it. I know, from when I was young… it's unwise to stick out, if you stick out then you'll be the first to be spotted when it comes to finding someone to blame."

That stung. Was she taking it out on the people she was working with? By the sounds of it, it seemed that if nothing else Kasumi had been affected by it. Feeling guilty, Kallen looked aside, and nodded "I'm sorry."

Kasumi leaned her head aside, and sighed "I just want to help. I know how talented you are."

"I know." Kallen acknowledged, before Kasumi repeated "I just want to help. You can do good things, you just need to listen."

Kallen sighed. Of course, of course. Kasumi mightn't know about racing, but she surely knew more about life, and people, a topic Kallen was so evidently illeducated on, judging by her outbursts at Brazil and after Austria. She was hardly qualified to say what they thought of her; if Kasumi was saying this, someone who cared about her, she could only take that as authoritative, even if she wasn't sure.

She had made assumptions about another persons intentions before, and that had ended up with someone being physically crippled and their life ruined. Better to trust Kasumi.

However, there was one other person.

"But what about Naoto? He hasn't said-"

And then Kallen paused. Naoto had gone. Bahrain, that Bahrain, the last she had seen of him. He had made a point of keeping to the Rebellion garages when he could, and they had never used the same hotel at any point in their careers except at Japan, as they were bought out by the teams as a bundle. He had been going out of his way to avoid her since she had told him about Kasumi.

"-anything..."

She realised she had no idea what he thought any more than anyone else. She guessed he was angry at Kasumi for kicking them out, but what could she intuit from there?

After a pause, Kasumi shook her head, and sighed "Naoto is… still young, he hasn't the adult experience. He doesn't have as much emotional intelligence, at least not from everything I've seen. I would imagine either that, or he's jealous."

Kallen's eyes raised, as she asked, uncertain "Jealous?"

Kasumi paused, before glancing aside, hesitant, and slowly explaining "I mean, if you had been working on achieving something for a decade and someone came and in less than three years nicked the glory out from under you, you'd be cross now, wouldn't you? It's not his fault, that he wasn't quite able to."

Kallen blinked. Wasn't quite able to…?

After a moment, Kasumi looked aside, and sighed again.

"I mean…" Kasumi began, pursing her lips as she stopped suddenly, before reluctantly continuing "It's pretty clear. You've what, twenty-one poles in fifty-two starts? Has Naoto even sat on pole more than once, in over a hundred tries at it? You've double his wins in half the time, of course he'd be jealous, he isn't as good and he doesn't want to face it. It's only natural he'd be trying to get a leg up on you, try and get the psychological advantage."

Kallen shook her head, feebly protesting, uncertain, "He would never…"

"Sure you said it yourself." Kasumi insisted. "Ye are so competitive you'd foot race each other to the bottom of a hill. I'm sure he's changed, but I don't think you'd deny that when it comes to competition, you'd do most anything to win."

Kallen winced. It wasn't untrue. She had done awful things, whether it was the assault of Lelouch, or her blackout refusal to do anything for Xingke, who was going to die in the coming months, almost certainly unfulfilled, because she simply had to win. She could not conceive of anything else.

No, that was wrong. The reality was worse. She could conceive of it, but she spoke to no one, and carried on. If she had been unable to think of thinking of any alternative but to race, had the thought not occurred to her, not haunted her, that she could pull in and stop, that she could speak with Suzaku, Naoto, Rolo and Gino privately, discreetly, if she had no malice aforethought that might constitute the mind of a guilty party, of a complicit party, it would have been less of a stain, than for her to sit, to know what she was doing, that it was wrong, why it was wrong, and what she could instead do in advance, and stick to the plan it anyway. That was altogether more unforgiveable.

And she had done it. She had been selfish. And she knew most of her compatriots would do so in parallel, she was by no means unique in her awfulness, but the Nuremberg defence was not historically a reliable crutch.

While Naoto had heretofore been far too much of a mollusc to acknowledge why Kallen had won instead of him, Kallen would not put it past him for a near miss, at the hands of his much less experienced sister, to have finally made the penny drop for him, for him to realise that the person she was helping was his opponent.

Perhaps it had already dropped. He had hardly been in the most enthused mood back in December when she returned, refusing to be drawn on the topic of Kallen's championship.

Sympathetic, Kasumi stroked the back of Kallen's hair, and cooed "Don't worry. The worst thing you can do is let it get to you. You shouldn't let yourself be held back by him, he's not fast enough to merit that much worry."

The distractions. Was Naoto the source of it? Kallen wondered. The whole affair was borne of Naoto's sudden hostility, and while the situation around their separation had been explained to her, Kallen still was still experiencing some confused disconnect between the story and Naoto's response, on top of his continued seclusion from her in Rebellion. It didn't make sense, however viewed from this lens…

Jealousy, perhaps exacerbating the response, seeing Kallen be happy at a returning Kasumi, who he had not parted on good terms with, boiling over into a sudden outburst, from which he had retreated into a sullen strike.

Kasumi tilted her head sympathetically, and asked "You won't let it get to you, right? I'll always be here for you."

Kallen nodded.

"Of course I won't."

* * *

Naoto sniffed as he climbed out of the taxi, nodding to the driver before tapping his debit card to cover the cost from Nice Airport to here, the Parc Princesse Antoinette, having arrived at a definite conclusion; that chicken salsa he had been fed on the plane was no better with time to reflect on the taste stuck to his tongue and throat than it had been at first exposure.

A sign was displayed above the park, with a single expression, in French. Welcome to Monaco.

Welcome indeed, he smirked.

Naoto had always done well at the street circuit, though in his career he had never pulled away with a win around the historic course. If there was anywhere to take a bite into Suzaku's eleven point advantage, here was as good a place as any.

For Naoto, the year was going reasonably well. Suzaku had pulled off a win at Canada, but Naoto had been ahead in points before that lucky break, and 2-2 in finishes ahead. For someone who was meant to be "destroyed" and "put to bed" by Suzaku, the wily urban pilot was very much keeping Suzaku within reach.

All this led to him stepping in towards his bed and breakfast with a sense of satisfied calm. He was driving as good as he ever had, and he was now established as a front running driver, which he had never been in his first career. It wasn't perfect; Kasumi coming back and Kallen choosing to spend all her time within her orbit was frustrating, given Naoto's personal sense of hurt. He certainly had had a few sleepless nights after Kallen had mentioned meeting her, however, as time passed, he had resigned himself to her choices, deciding to leave Kallen to her own devices, though out of no less leeriness at the woman herself.

The siblings had not spoken since Bahrain, but Naoto wasn't without friends in Camelot, and kindhearted team members were keeping him abreast of his sisters disposition and alerting him if it appeared something alarming was happening. For now, nothing, Kallen was just catching up with her mother.

He was of two minds. He could explain. At least, in the abstract, he knew that he could explain what had happened, if he could compose himself and find the right words to get to the end of the story without breaking down into tears and shakes. He could go to Kallen, and there was a finite quantity of words that, if arranged in the appropriate order, could explain what a shattering experience it had been, what had happened, but he did not feel that he was ready. He had been exposed with Kallen, vulnerable, and yet there was still a layer he felt too weak to unfurl.

Of course, he could be panicking over nothing.

It was by no means impossible, after all. that Kasumi had changed, but, especially seeing her for the first time since she had thrown them out, it was too raw. The emotional work of summoning up the ability to confront her, to question her, to see if she had grown, would require a degree of exposure, of a show of vulnerability by virtue of the fact that an explicit rebuff would sting that much more. For now, while there was some uncertainty, there was at least a level of plausible deniability that would give Naoto that doubt that was holding him from falling down the cliff of reaffirming a reality wherein his mother despised him. At the end of the day, he did not want to believe his mother was a bad person, and did not care to try to inquire further in case of disappointment.

And it was such with Kallen. Even without the context of that night, Kallen surely knew enough out of the fact that Kasumi had left a seventeen year old and a ten year old out in the cold to be able to make an adult decision as to whether she wanted to reconnect with someone who she had not seen fit to reconnect with her children in years, and how much that that meant to her. And, frankly, who was Naoto to step in and declare that his aggrievement, separate from the general aggrievement of being thrown out of home, overrode that?

Naoto didn't like it, but Kallen was an adult, a World Champion. She had a motorbike. As much as Naoto despised their mother for what she had done to them, Kallen was an adult. Twenty years old at this point. Who she talked with was her business, if she got something out of it. Not his problem if she decided to spend her time with a piece of shit that had made them homeless out of a petty hate.

Not his fucking problem. He had plenty of those already.

As Naoto walked up to the rustic hotel, the receptionist smiled, and greeted "Good afternoon, do you want to make a booking or do you have a reservation?"

"Reservation, please, under Kōzuki Naoto."

Nodding, she confirmed "Of course sir, just one moment."

She immediately set to work tapping away at a fifteen year old keyboard linked to a computer that was deeper than it was wide. He smirked. Imagine, calling him sir. Naoto Kōzuki, Sir. He cast a slight glance at himself in the lobby mirror. Sunglasses, a well fitted suit, a clean shave, checking into a sun drenched hotel on the French Riviera. He felt cool, like some kind of globe-trotting secret agent from slick mid-century novels, even if half of his face was burnt off.

As he smiled mellowly, his ears absorbed the ambient sounds around him, amongst this came the plea of "Can you just check, I need to see if they're here."

It only stood out for being a heavily accented English, almost Highlands, in what was an overwhelmingly French speaking area, but no matter. The clacking of the keyboard paused, and the receptionist spoke up.

"You have a reservation Mr Kōzuki, please wait here and I'll get your room key."

Nodding, the twenty-seven-year-old turned and looked out over the harbour, elbows propped against the desk. There were few more relaxing sights, in his view. The sea was sparkling into the amber, fitting the scene perfectly. All he needed was a sixties sports car and perhaps a cute-

"No, sir… wait, hang on, apparently he's just checked in."

"What? Where-"

This parallel conversation, now raised in pitch and volume, now consumed the entire lobby, and just as Naoto, curiosity well piqued, turned around to see what the fuss was about, Nathan Stadtfeld turned to the lobby to find his son.

"-is he…"

Naoto stood, stunned. He remembered where he had last seen that face, and it had barely changed; earned a few more stress lines, perhaps, but Naoto would be lying if he hadn't earned his fair share as well. Not to mention Naoto's more prominent facial scarring. The dark red hair… fierce glare…

"Sir, that's him, he just checked in as we were speaking."

It was the receptionist speaking to Nathan, however neither man heard her.

"Naoto?"

At hearing his name from his father, he suddenly stood to attention, before catching on and relaxing. Time was, Naoto was a child, but that had changed. He was maybe half an inch shorter than his father, though certainly no less slender, angular or visibly rigid.

"Father?"

Naoto let the word slip out in a moment of vulnerability, his voice letting go halfway through the word and getting jammed in his throat. Suddenly, Naoto was stuck in place, to that last time. He had been seven, when Nathan had left; Kallen was barely a few months old, and they both still lived with the woman, back then.

He had meant everything, had been frozen in time ever since. He had had to be Kallen's Nathan.

"I..."

He had to spend nineteen years without Nathan, ten of which without his mother. Kallen had been there, providing him company, but never solace. Often kindness, but not reassurance. Naoto wasn't upset about that; she was seven years younger, and much less experienced in life. If she had been capable of providing the sort of mature advice that Naoto needed it would have represented, far from a miracle of maturity, a failure on his own self-imposed part to preserve some of that naivety and innocence that youth brought, even if only for a time.

He would never demand it of her, but that did not mean he didn't resent its absence, that he didn't crave some of the certainty of familial hierarchy. He would be there for his sister, and he would not have it any other way, at least for as long as she wanted him to be there. But he had for a long time been without an equivalent for himself, someone who he could lean on. The buck had always stopped with him, at least since the woman had gotten rid of them.

"It's me, Naoto... it's your dad."

Naoto finally lowered his reflexive defences, and finally answered "Yes..."

He had been holding up a household as a lone teenager for a decade. He had stood alone for so long, he was so incredibly tired.

"I've been looking all over town, I heard you were coming..." the Scot began, before halting, and, with a squint, approached, as if trying to look for something, only able to whisper as he looked closer "Your face…"

Nathan's hand momentarily reached up to his sons burned face, the area looking like a charred rasher stretching across the right side of his head. Memories of Hungary.

"It's been a wild nineteen years."

Naoto did at least manage to say the line with a whisper of a chuckle, despite the day being seared into his mind as much as onto his skin. Nathan, however, looked quiet, waving his thumb about his sons collarbone, after so many years.

"Naoto..." he breathed, before smiling. "Thank goodness you're safe."

Naoto smiled in return. Kallen had never known him, but Naoto had long him long enough to have always wondered. What might have happened if he had stayed? If he'd been there to tell her to stop, say enough, to sway her. He would never know. It was pointless speculation anyway; he was here now.

"I knew you could do it. I knew the streets wouldn't eat you." Nathan smiled. "Look at you... I can't believe it, you've..."

He paused, to collect himself, before with an airy voice, audibly holding back tears, continuing.

"You've shone so brightly. You have... you have risen, risen from hurrying around in karts on your own, brought Kallen with you... you have shown more courage, more fortitude, and more patience than I have seen in many grown men. I am so proud of you Naoto-senshu."

He was caught in that moment, frozen. He had not heard those words, certainly not in the last two decades, from very many people, and less from those Naoto put weight into the approval of. A young person might be easily impressed. A crew member had played their own part, but the relationship was of business. Kallen was a wonderful person, but not an authority. To hear it from his father, to hear the words of affirmation. That he was a good person. That he was a skilled pilot. That he had done well in his efforts to forge a livelihood on his own. That he had done well by Kallen. He realised he had needed to hear that, had always needed to hear that. In one sense it perhaps reflected poorly on Naoto himself, that he was still in this sense dependant on praise, that he still needed to have it said to him, like a child, that he was doing a good job, that he had still not developed past that. It was perhaps more childish to live not for an internal drive but for the approval of others, as for as much as his pursuit of racing as a career was earned from within, he nonetheless felt vindicated by, and pursuantly winced at feeling vindicated by, his father's approval.

And he didn't care.

He couldn't have cared less if the moment of him beginning to weep had been broadcasted for the entirety of the Cote d'Azur to see. He would have stood by the moment with pride, as he came to the understanding that his struggle was over.

The Scotsman continued, head dipped slightly. "I'm so sorry I left... that I couldn't be there to see it. Catch some of the light shining off you. I couldn't have asked for a braver, for a more earnest, for a more kind... you've done so spectacularly. I'm proud that I could have you as a son, grateful that I could have that privilege."

Naoto choked, barely able to reply "Dad..."

He had questions, but they all slipped away, fading into dust, losing any form that could be grasped at as he sunk into his fathers arms, sobbing.

Perhaps this was what Kallen recognised in Kasumi.

Nathan had been such a reassuring and encouraging presence while he lived with them. Always encouraging, always understanding. Ever since he had been gone, things had gone wrong. But these arms could hold, could mend. If he was back... things could start getting better.

There were no more questions. After twenty years, he was home.

"Thank you dad..."


	8. Unfamiliar Kerb

While the Kōzuki siblings, and their respective teams, settled into the Provencal seaside with ease after the tour up the Great Divide, ultimately business had to be conducted. A return to Europe saw an opportunity to install the first raft of upgrades around the most grip limited circuit. Of course, this necessitated on some decision making on where the priorities would go. However, at the Camelot garage, this decision was not necessarily as obvious as it seemed on paper.

"You're not either of you very consistent huh..."

The remark came from Bartley, who was looking down at a piece of paper unimpressed.

Kallen could hardly blame him. She was unable to replicate the consistency she had last year, with momentary lapses in focus having drastic consequences as she could not keep stringing lap after lap at full tilt. While Euphemia had been insightful, there was some deficit between insightful and helpful, and Kallen was left with no more actionable ideas as to how to resolve the problem.

Well, there was; she could naturally take the intensity down, meter herself, but that was an anathema to her. The question would remain, what was leading to her continued distractions and diversions and anxiety. And, moreover, that solution would present its own problem, as without that sense of thrill, that rush of barely being on the limit of control and balancing the car on a knife edge, she knew, in her heart of hearts, she would quickly lose interest, find it harder and harder to keep at her ferocious routine of fitness to prepare for races, harder to spend the time going over the car to make sure everything was set up just so, harder to dedicate the hours to getting the team working in harmony with her. This would form a vicious cycle that would see Kallen lose favour with the team and lose her career.

"We have pace in this package. We've had two wins so far, it's just been mistakes that's kept us from more points."

Kallen cast her eyes down, knowing who had spoken up, knowing it wasn't her. Gino, with an elbow propped on the table and his elbow bent just so, allowing his fingers, knuckles facing down, to point at Bartley with the proper combination of relaxed and insistent, had made the point with just the slightest nudging tone, like he was deliberately implying something.

And he was. And he was right to. The statistics showed it. As annoyed as Kallen was, the statistics would not become more friendly with indignation.

"With more rear downforce, I could take this package to the front a good bit more." Gino explained. "I'm finding a lot of speed leaning on the front, but the rear needs to not threaten to mutiny when I do that."

Why was it happening? She rattled through her head. More rear downforce wouldn't hurt, but she knew she could handle this care, if she just got it together. She should be able to handle any car she was given, that was always her gimmick. More rear downforce would mitigate a symptom, but the problem would remain.

"Are you sure you're not pushing the package too hard?" Bartley asked.

Gino frowned, before doubling down, making his point more explicit, "Listen, I'm at least getting some results."

It was true. No matter what Kallen could say, excuses were not convertible into World Championship Points. If only she could shake this… whatever it was. For someone who seemed to arrive at it very often, seemed to get distracted by it, in its anonymous haze, in its unknown and unknowable pre-eminence in her mind, she could not get a clear grasp of what seemed to be taking hold of her. It had started as worrying about Naoto's and Kasumi's apparent animus, but Kallen had grown increasingly incapable of grasping at it, mentally grabbing onto brittle little moments of clarity with broken fingernails and trying not to sink into the ocean, like sticks to fashion into a hut in the depths of arctic winter.

She shook her head. If she could stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it.

"All I'm saying is that we're in a shot for this championship, if we do this right." Gino insisted, after a pause. "I can do this, you've seen my pace. I just need some backup from the team."

"Are you in the best of health?"

And what then? Gino had stepped up his pace dramatically this year, competing for pole positions, with no explanation. She couldn't slow down to try and be less vulnerable to sudden losses in concentration, because she would be swallowed immediately. She had no way to go fast that didn't involve risking it all, on the delicate knife edge. She knew that the extremes lay between usability and speed, and she had always chosen speed, but now she had no usability to lean on.

"I'm fine." Gino replied. "Knocked around a bit, but who hasn't been. No, I can do this, if I'm given confidence that if I push, the car isn't going to snap on me."

The fundamental architecture of the car was sound. She knew, partly from Gino's example and partly from her own sense of how the car felt under her, that this car could be manoeuvred to success. What was she not doing? She knew there was a combination of inputs that could make it work, she felt it, but she couldn't work her way around this car no matter how hard she tried. Why couldn't she drive through it?

"Alright." Bartley nodded. "How do you feel Kallen?"

Caught off guard, she hurriedly started "I..."

She sighed. How to explain? She wasn't able to reliably drive around the car, which had been what had always helped her see the day through; come race day, she could work around any cars particular idiosyncracies and quirks with her driving, adapting to the car on the fly.

But now… now it was different. The car changed its reactions to certain corners and certain inputs lap by lap, the same corner with the same braking point and the same steering lock, and it might at any point understeer, oversteer, lock up, not lock up, with no indication and no consistency. She had no stable platform from which to build some kind of technique or doctrine or at the very least routine to try and replicate that would, even if she didn't understand it, provide fast laps.

What was going wrong?

"The car is inconsistent, but..."

She sighed. Of course, she could, and had the ability to, circumvent even this; if she could simply focus hard enough, she could drive around even an inconsistent car, a car that changed its mannerisms, by reacting on the fly in a purer sense, flying blind into every corner and dealing with each situation discretely, with no reference to her previous interactions with it. It was something she knew she could do, but for so long as she had to do it, and couldn't rely on the car not being liable to sudden snaps at any moment, she couldn't have the moments of distractions that she was doing.

"I'm needing to improve, I'm not sure." she admitted. "I think there's a bit that can be improved but..."

Bartley frowned, and asked "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Kallen nodded, waving it off, though not as convincingly as she had hoped. "Yeah, I'm grand. I'm just trying to think. I agree with Gino, having the rear more planted will solve a lot of problems. We just need to focus on where we're losing time over a race."

Just as her mum was finally watching, she was fumbling. She shook her head. Why was this happening?

She couldn't wait for the meeting to be over, for her to be excused, to be able to rush to the bathroom and blast on the taps and stare at herself in the mirror as she sprayed water into her face.

For fucks sake. Why couldn't anything just work the way it was fucking supposed to?

Her hair was fucking unmanageable, she was ripping apart her body every fortnight for disappointment, her hands were bloody, and to top it all off, she couldn't even get her fucking car under control. She felt a vicious lump build in her throat as she slammed her fist into the tiled wall, cracking it, leaving the slightest lick of the eternal blood. No. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't some pathetic helpless damsel, not anymore. She knew what she had to do to dig out of this whole. It just took a sterner will.

She just needed to try harder.

She looked to the girl in the mirror for reassurance, but none came. Instead, her eyes returned only fear and confusion. She had never excelled in anything else, in school, in trying to make friends, the only thing she could do even passably well, the only thing she had ever been successful at, the only thing she could ever amount to, was beign able to drive a car and she had taken that and shaped it into a fundamental element of who she was, but now...

Now she barely recognized herself. She was just some barely-literate mistake with anger issues who had lost the only trick that had given her any worth. A growing part of her wished there was a way to reach into the mirror and strangle that useless waste of a human staring back at her.

* * *

"You're not either of you very consistent huh..."

Gino bristled at Bartley's comment, frowning down and biting his upper lip as the man drew his conclusions from the page before him. For as much as it was apparent that Bartley was trying to avoid laying out the obvious, Gino knew it, and suspected that Bartley was thinking it; that while they were both inconsistent, it was for vastly different reasons, and borne of wildly different causes. Gino knew what was happening in his camp; to keep up the blistering pace Kallen had proved the car could carry if driven in a particular way, he had to drive in a way that left the car in a state of instability, from which he was only sometimes able to maintain without error.

This was perhaps his most surprising lesson; as he dipped his toe into the water of this more aggressive, spirited style of driving in the style of Kallen, he gained a quick admiration of how quick her instincts and reflexes had to be to succeed at it. However, it was the work of human hands, and could be mirrored by them, if imperfectly. At Indianapolis, at Mexico, he had made the mistake Kallen only occasionally made, that of asking too much of the tyres. He had to work at managing the limit, but he knew that, and knew how to do it. The more work he did, the more practiced he got at feeling out the ways the car would respond under various loadings, would invariably elevate his consistency. Of course, more grip never hurt.

It was a very different problem Gino was facing to what Kallen was facing, Kallen who was the prototype for this staccato style of driving, who at full chat could sense out the limits. It was not as if Gino was not paying attention to Kallen's season; he knew that he had to learn from her if he was to surpass her, and he had been a diligent student. He could, if in such a mood, probably better explain what she was doing than she could, given her tendency to attribute it to sensations and instincts.

No, her problem wasn't that she was unable to find the limit, or at least, it was not for the same reason Gino was unable to. While Gino had been preparing all winter for his chance at glory, armed with his new perspective and humbled, Kallen had arrived at Bahrain very much not the same. Unusually introspective, certainly more introverted, and ambiguously troubled. Certainly, not to an extent someone that was not intensely interested in studying Kallen so as to measure themselves against her would notice, but Gino, unfortunately or otherwise, was not such a person. Perhaps something had changed, perhaps she had made some disquieting discovery, but Gino could not guess at what that would be. He had been seeing more of a woman he had been told was her mother, but she appeared pleasant enough. What was the missing piece?

What a cretin, he soured. Obsessing over a woman's personal life to see how he could get an advantage over her. But he had promised to leave no stone unturned, and he was only just discovering how many stones there were on the beach to search through.

But he had to. If he was to know how to succeed, he had to learn what pitfalls Kallen had fallen into so as to avoid them himself. If he didn't have a capacity to learn from when he was being beaten, see how he was beaten so as to get faster, if he refused to learn, he would never win.

And he so wanted to win. He wanted this championship more than his next breath. He had come so close last year, he could taste it, and in that moment realised how achievable it was, if only he put together a good season. It was no longer an alien dream, artificially separate from his results, existing in some hypothetical anonymous future to grab when it was available. That moment woke him up to the fact that that time to grab it was now, if he worked for it. It would not arrive on his door, he had to seize it.

And he would not let it pass him by.

And as of yet, at least in terms of his attitude, he wasn't. His issues were from pushing too hard, and those were issues that could be resolved. His wasn't lacking pace, not anymore. He had two wins to prove it. It was easier to make a fast package more stable than make a stable package faster. With that in mind, he finally, after a long, awkward silence, spoke up, countering the assertion that his season and Kallens were similar.

"We have pace in this package. We've had two wins so far, it's just been mistakes that's kept us from more points."

Fundamentally, Gino had been carrying the team. It wasn't polite to say it, but subtext could do plenty of linguistic heavy lifting. At this necessity, he let out a sharp breath, before feeling a dagger slip suddenly in between his ribs, piercing open his lungs in a spiking and peaking again. He tried to hide a wince as he suddenly halted his lungs dead in their tracks, bracing his chest before more slowly releasing the gas held within them, like trying to meter the air flowing out of a balloon after the knot had been undone. Breath too deep or too suddenly, and it would spike, like a bullet straight through the chest on the right-hand side.

"With more rear downforce, I could take this package to the front a good bit more." he insisted. "I'm finding a lot of speed leaning on the front, but the rear needs to not threaten to mutiny when I do that."

"Are you sure you're not pushing the package too hard?"

A fair criticism, but Gino knew what to do about that, and was in a far better position than Kallen. Conceding, he titled his head to the side and sighed, "Listen, I'm at least getting some results."

There was a pause, silent, awkward. Gino, trying not to irritate his ticket to victory, hurried to smooth things back over.

"All I'm saying is that we're in a shot for this championship, if we do this right." he reassured. "I can do this, you've seen my pace. I just need some backup from the team."

He was losing his patience, dropping the general language and pretences to make his point more explicit. Kallen hardly needed any confirmation of Gino's subtext, however Bartley's brow seemed to furrow at it, as he, if only for a moment, pushed back.

"Are you in the best of health?"

Gino's eyebrow twitched slightly. Not enough to be seen, but he felt it, he felt the slight irritation in the muscles governing the space between the eye socket and the forehead. He had a bruised lung and two cracked ribs. Not ideal, but hardly crippling. He couldn't do exercises with his boxer muscles on the right hand side, but he wasn't doing muscle training anymore to make himself as light as he could. Unless he took an uncharacteristically sharp breath, or took up a heavy load in raising his right arm, it would be a manageable pain. Thankfully, the F1 cars, in spite of Kallens disaster at Japan, had power steering that the force needed to turn the wheel could be turned back to manageable levels.

It wasn't a problem, and certainly not one that was going to stop him, not at what could be his only chance. Imagine, years later, you had given up your one chance because of a bruised lung? Gino wouldn't be able to live with that.

"I'm fine." he insisted. "Knocked around a bit, but who hasn't been. No, I can do this, if I'm given confidence that if I push, the car isn't going to snap on me."

Bartley nodded, and Gino smiled. Kallen might have other issues, distractions that erased any possibility of being able to overcome a bad setup with concentration, but these things worked in tandem. Lacking a knowledge of why things produced the results in the dynamics of the car was as bad, in Gino's eyes, as not knowing that they did them at all, and he was seeing it in how Kallen was struggling. Her time out of school and her playing hooky in physics was catching up with her.

The car was very difficult to set up, only providing the optimum grip within a very narrow window, juggling suspension camber, toe, spring rate, and wing levels to maximise if not grip, then control. Gino already had a firm grasp of what Kallen's driving style, which he was to all intents and purpose mimicking, and with his superior understanding of the nuts and bolts of how and why the car moved how it did, he was better able to set it up to facilitate the behaviour he wanted to engender.

Of course, it was only just within his control, and sometimes it stepped beyond, but he did at least understand perfectly why. To solve a problem, you had to know why it was happening, and as he looked at Kallen, he knew he was far more likely to get on top of his issues with the car than Kallen hers.

She was both too benighted to understand the science what was going on in the car and hence why she was struggling to set it up to flatter her talent, and too arrogant to ask Gino why it was not happening to him.

"Alright." Bartley agreed. "How do you feel Kallen?"

Gino had been doing his research. Kallen had always had to make do with what she had, she was not able to tailor her machinery to her exact liking, and so she had taken to making general modifications, simply dealing with whatever issues the car had in the setup with her driving by driving around it. She did adjust the wings, and the diff and brake bias were adjustable from inside the cockpit, but while she was incredible at driving through the problems of a car that was badly set up, this doctrine had a lower ceiling than if the car was set up perfectly to do what she wanted. That was how Gino, who had been so comprehensively slower the previous year, had closed the gap.

"I..." she began, before stopping, and after a moment, stutteringly continued "The car is inconsistent, but..."

He did not view that as him being worse. Slower did not mean worse. There was absolutely no contradiction. A driver who was fast, but lost time to a poor understanding of their car, was not a superior driver to one that understood how to get everything out of their package. It was a holistic consideration

"I'm needing to improve, I'm not sure." Kallen continued, looking down. "I think there's a bit that can be improved but..."

Gino was the best driver on the grid. He knew it in his gut that he was better than Kallen.

"Are you alright?"

And he would, finally, win a championship.

"Yeah." Kallen finally nodded, before biting her lip. "Yeah, I'm grand. I'm just trying to think. I agree with Gino, having the rear more planted will solve a lot of problems. We just need to focus on where we're losing time over a race."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to leave a comment letting me know what you like about the story so far and what you think can be improved!


	9. We Run These Streets

"Last lap Rolo, last lap, come on, all or nothing! You can get past Edgar out of the tunnel, come on!"

The Frenchman huffed as he cranked the wheel into Sainte Devote, doggedly pursuing the BAR pilot through the crest and up the hill towards the Casino. Flick the energy deployment back to full recovery, and hound the Briton all the way through the off camber right hander at Massenet. The car could do it, even round these narrow streets, but only if Rolo pushed, pushed, pushed through Casino Square and down into Mirabeau Upper.

The race had started with Kallen on pole, however Xingke's plan, outlined in the meeting, worked like a charm. On the second lap, Xingke allowed Rolo to pass for second place, and Xingke hung back and paced himself, saving his tyres and his energy as Rolo kept pushing Kallen, just as he was pushing Edgar now. As she tried to keep Rolo from burning her heels, she destroyed her tyres and was forced to pit early, falling back into the pack. Xingke then passed Rolo back, and with fresher tyres was able to pull up a gap to the pack behind him, now headed by Rolo, who with more worn tyres had lost more and more time until he pitted, with plenty of time to make up.

The strategy had at least worked at getting Xingke into clean air, as he had led the race uncontested from when he took the baton back from his teammate, however it had cost Rolo, who had come out in eighth, and now he was eyeing up Edgar's sixth place.

It was a frustrating race, but Rolo suppressed that. There was still work to be done.

Rolo hugged the drain gulley on the inside, using the slight camber to hook his car around the apex tightly, and holding to the wide part of the run up to the hairpin as Edgar suddenly realised that, from the inside, the tightest corner in F1 was about to become a lot tighter, and with Rolo having a wing alongside he couldn't move to the outside to open up the corner and make the angle less acute.

This meant he had to slow to walking pace and apply all the lock he had to make the corner, contrasting with Rolo, who along the outside could carry more speed with less lock, allowing him to wrap around the widest part of the corner and pull alongside, only behind by virtue of it being the longer route by radian distance. However, he was able to get on the power sooner, carry more speed out of the corner, and edge ahead by the time they reached Mirabeau Lower, and more importantly than that, he had the inside, allowing him to dominate the line through the corner and push Edgar out, sealing the sixth position as they reached Portier. Over the radio, someone mentioned that Xingke had at that point crossed the line and won the race. With Edgar behind him, Rolo was able to flow through the back quarter of the lap, letting the car fly through Tabac, the Swimming Pool, and into Rascasse, and running up to the line in a comfortable, but irritating sixth.

It was good. It was certainly better than last year, when he had crashed out, but when his teammate was winning...

Rolo bit his lip. Losing was never fun, but losing to a teammate was even more sour. Shaking his head, he rounded Sainte Devote on his cool down lap to pick up rubber, as the marshalls waved the yellow flags to make sure everyone past the line slowed to a safe speed.

As Rolo adjusted the various switches and knobs to tune the engine down to lean running, his radio crackled into life, and he heard his brothers voice.

"Good job Rolo, you did really well." he confirmed into the microphone. "I know it's not the result you might want, but this was the best result we could get. We're all really proud and appreciative, thank you."

Rolo didn't reply, as the radio crackled again, signalling Lelouch leaving the mic, and leaving Rolo with much to think on.

The best result they could get. From a second and a third in qualifying, a first and a sixth. Lelouch had been insistent this was the only way to win, but Kallen, perhaps the quinsessential hare as much as she was persona non grata around Lelouch, had won on a balls to the wall mad stint of pushing, and against Xingke no less. Then again, not everyone had Kallen's pace, or focus.

Not even Xingke, who had barrelled into the night down the Mulsanne for hours untold. He was fast, faster than Rolo, but there was something in Rolo that bristled at a Lelouch that was operating around Xingke, a Lelouch that was not focusing on Rolo even for a second, in his arrogance.

Rolo didn't like that part of Rolo one bit. That part was an entitled shit. That didn't make it go away.

Mulling over all of this, Rolo peeled off his cooldown lap into the pits, lining up at the end of the longest line and turning the engine off, before taking a deep breath. He took his head surround out, and stood up out from the cockpit, looking around at the cars present to see who finished where.

Looking at the timing tower, it seemed Kallen had managed to climb back into fourth after pitting early with wrecked tyres, likely as a function as having caught back up to the rear of the pack before they made their pit stops allowing her to leapfrog them. This left Suzaku to take fifth. Rolo, after having taken a moment to drink out of the water canister connected through his helmet, took off his helmet and removed his balaclava, trying to catch his breath.

After a moment, he jogged across to join the team stood at the steel fencing between the pitwall and the front straight, where the podium finishers had parked. Gino and Naoto had finished second and third, but the winner, clambering out of his Schwarzenritter, was Li Xingke. The young Frenchman watched as his brother, after having walked across to the blue prototype, leaned over and, to Rolo's amazement, helped pull Xingke out of the cockpit. Rolo had to blink. Lelouch wasn't able to lift anything of significance at the best of times, and that was before his nerve injury, even if Lelouch's contribution may have been better described as providing an anchor for Xingke to grab onto and pull himself up.

Xingke looked absolutely exhausted as Lelouch helped him get his helmet off and helped the breathless Asian out into the light.

So this was why, Rolo silently acknowledged. Xingke couldn't be the hare because he wasn't strong enough, and being the one to hang back would save up his stamina. This was who Lelouch was putting his faith in, to carry the team? Rolo wasn't going to doubt his brothers judgement, at least not yet, but he was unsettled. It seemed very risky, if nothing else.

Then again, this was nothing new, as far as Rolo could tell. Lelouch would dedicate his life to protecting his family, would weep with joy at his sisters recovery from grave injury, but try to provide for them by going motor racing, hardly a lucrative career path, betting everything on being able to perform miracles with his quick thinking in an environment where so many things could go wrong that were out of your control. He had been in a position to retire with all the money he would receive from Kallen in the civil suit after she had brutally assaulted him, however it was only the call to adventure to save Rosenberg that had brought any spark to his eyes, even if doing nothing would expose his family to much less unnecessary risk. He was in the clear, his family were in the clear, but he leapt right back into the jaw of the lion.

Therein lay the paradox of Lelouch Lamperouge, he supposed. In another life he could have been a masterful gambler, perhaps at chess or some other cerebral endeavour. He was committed to his family, but could only survive if he was in some sort of conflict, if there was something to draw his narrow eyelids to alert, to send the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Then there was the dimension added by his silent confession as he had been trying to learn to walk again, when he had attempted to insist that he and Nunnally not involve themselves. The requiem for his stature within the household was a quiet piece, but it was playing long. How much of it came down to paternalist arrogance, an idea that Lelouch always knew best and that all the affairs of his siblings, who were approaching adulthood themselves, should be left to him in their entirety, as if they had not aged a day since they came into his custody.

However, as Rolo contemplated this, his ear began to pipe up. Xingke's radio had been left on, and as he caught his breath, letting Rolo, whose audio reception was still piped through his earplugs, hear what they said. However, for as much as he heard it, Rolo quickly realised he couldn't understand it, as they were talking, Lelouch stutteringly and Xingke breathlessly, in Mandarin, interrupted only by a correction perhaps once every couple of sentences.

Rolo stood at the edge of the pit wall as he listened, accompanied by a view of Xingke chugging down water as Lelouch sounded like he was congratulating him.

Lelouch had learned Chinese in the last five months, at least to a basic level where he was capable of holding a conversation. It certainly wasn't beyond the realms of possibility, he had learned Japanese to converse with Suzaku, and English purely to try and expand the breadth of sponsors he could scam, but to have learnt it so quickly for what seemed the sole benefit of Xingke nonetheless struck Rolo. He had done it for Suzaku, and if that was any arbiter as to when he would put in that sort of effort, it was remarkable indeed that he had done that for their new driver.

Especially in light of how exhausted he seemed after a single race. It hardly inspired confidence.

As soon as Xingke seemed to recover, Lelouch waved across towards the western side, opposite the pit wall, inviting Xingke up towards the podium. Rolo watched as they retreated behind the building, and the team gathered on the road below the platform the top three drivers and a representative of the winning team would each receive their trophies before the anthems of the winning driver and team, here Chinese and French, would play.

Naoto, followed by Gino made their way up, each being handed their respective third and second place trophies. It was a strange mirror of the first third of 2019, with a Xingke-Gino-Naoto podium, a permutation that had arisen in three of the first five races the previous year. However, this year was different, with Xingke now the only man to finish on the podium in every single race, with three firsts and three second place finishes.

Perhaps that was why Lelouch was focused on him.

In any case, the announcer, after the Japanese and British drivers had taken their positions, continued onto the next recipient.

"Receiving the prize for the winning constructor Schwarzenritter Grand Prix will be their team owner and principle, returning to the podium after winning the race in 2018, Lelouch Lamperouge, with the trophy presented by Minister of State, Serge Telle!"

Stepping out into the sun came the uncharacteristically effervescent Frenchman, who hobbled over while pumping his fist, only stopping to accept the trophy before continuing, thrusting it out with his good arm as he continued to half-walk to the side, ready and waiting for the hero of the day to arrive.

"And now, for the first time a winner at Monaco, Li Xingke! Presenting the winners trophy is his Serene Highness Albert the Second, Sovereign Prince of Monaco!"

This earned raucous applause from the Schwarzenritter camp as Xingke, in spite of his visible exhaustion, exploded with enthusiasm, madly jumping about the podium, only stopping to grab his trophy and display it, hold it high to alert the entirety of southern France that he had finally got it, the one that had got away last year, the one that mattered, Monaco, the most famous in the world.

Li Xingke, Monaco Grand Prix winner. Rolo didn't think that sat too uncomfortably with the well decorated pilot.

"And now the champagne!"

That was as much invitation as the pair up on the podium needed, as Xingke and Lelouch immediately sprang into action, with Xingke shaking and spraying his champagne like he had won the race of his life, and Lelouch joining after Naoto had helped shake it up, only for the Japanese man to then turn on him and spray a mass of foam down his collar. Lelouch laughed, before turning and spraying him with a load in vengeance, before joining Xingke at the front and spraying down to the crew, the pair laughing as they stood back to back.

Xingke had done it, and both he and Lelouch weren't about to let the occasion pass by. For Lelouch, as for anyone, there was something special about Monaco that brought a light to his face, and succeeding here could bring him to life more than anything else. Up on that podium, Rolo saw Lelouch as something he was not often; genuinely, straightforwardly happy. As he shook the champagne to get it to spray out with some force, laughing alongside Xingke as they stood together up at the podium in celebration, Rolo sat down at the pitwall with uncertainty.

Lelouch never looked this way, or at least rarely. He seemed somewhat like this when flying to Britain to pitch in with Asplund in December of 2018, but generally he seemed to have a perpetual chip on his shoulder, perpetually wearing a dour frown, muttering foul plots, never content, always scheming. He was resentful, at the way the sport was run and the classism underpinning it, at how Charles' regime had squeezed out any prospect for a good driver rising up that did not come from either money or hefty sponsorship. Even now, it seemed that he spent a surprising amount of time on the phone with his former employer Reuben Ashford, who seemed to be going through financial difficulties, as a product of the sports ruthless financial policies. Charles was his Everest, his great white whale, and he could not rest without mulling it over, considering what ought to be done.

Rolo always felt it was a shame. Could Lelouch ever be happy? Or was he destined to an eternity of living like this, in some manner of Trotskyite permanent revolution, unable to put up his feet to rest, the war won? He seemed to be an eternal revolutionary, unable to live in peacetime, or whatever the racing equivalent might be called.

He knew, had seen, what Lelouch had gone through. Lelouch had endured an unspeakable amount of labour and pain to get Rolo and Nunnally to where they were, and, right now, nothing would have made Rolo more satisfied than to repay that, to make Lelouch feel happy, at peace, and to be the one to do that.

Rolo would not have gotten as far as he had without Lelouch's tenacity and spirit. He knew this. Lelouch was Rolo's personal hero for all his success, and nothing would mean more to him than be able to show it, for Lelouch to see it, too feel appreciated, and to know that he didn't have to keep pushing his nose against it. If Lelouch let go a bit, allowed Rolo to show him what he meant in his performances, was a little less overbearing in his plotting, less restless... maybe.

That would be something, if he could cure that restlessness. If, one day, Rolo could help Lelouch finally find his quiet comfort, to find a happiness that was not a brief moment of glee in an ocean of agonising and bitter malice and contempt for the world. If Rolo could do that for Lelouch, he would be delighted beyond imagination.

However, as he looked up, Rolo saw a picture without him. Rolo wasn't on that podium, Rolo wasn't there to do that for Lelouch. He saw Lelouch, delighted, celebrating a victory with Xingke, whose health looked in doubt. Lelouch had a grand wreath hung around his neck as he joyously celebrated like Rolo had never seen. They were madly spraying champagne all over the crew below, laughing as they did it, without him.

He gazed down. That could be him. That would be him. If he tried harder, his brother would see him, would acknowledge his talent, and know that his personal quest, started a decade ago, was at an end.

* * *

_Li Xingke – 129 (3 wins)_

_Gino Weinberg – 86 (2 wins)_

_Suzaku Kururugi – 74 (1 win)_

_Naoto Kōzuki – 71_

_Rolo Lamperouge – 68_

_Kallen Kōzuki – 61_

* * *

"You'll get them next time."

Kasumi smiled as she repeated this, sat beside Kallen in her trailer as Kallen, hunched over, stared at a point in the floor intensely with elbows on her knees. She shook her head as she held her lip tight, wondering how her season had kicked off like this, what she was doing that Gino wasn't, and what she could do about it. And then the distractions… they weren't the only problem, the car seemed to be much more unstable than even Kallen would like, but she never knew when she might be vulnerable, and have the car snap on her.

Not good enough.

"That's been what… six races?" Kallen mused. "A single third place to show for it. If there was gonna be a 'next time', it would have happened by now."

"It's intense competition." Kasumi replied, highlighting the level of the drivers she was up against. "Don't feel bad if you're not able to match them sometimes. I would hate to see you feeling bad. It doesn't reflect on you, that you're falling behind."

Kallen didn't initially reply, finding herself at a crossroads. Of course, her mother was right, of course, but...

She sighed. It wasn't a moral failing to lose. Of course. But that was not the same thing as it not being something that brought shame. If she couldn't keep up the pace, if she couldn't take the fight to Lamperouge and Kirihara et al, what was she worth to the team?

"It's not that."

The whole team were working, at least in half, around Kallen, to give her the best car they could so that Kallen could do as well as she could, and win races. They built all this infrastructure, but it would only go as far as Kallen alone could bring it; their work could only mean anything when applied through Kallen's deeds. If Kallen faltered, it wasn't just her that would have to deal with the consequences of falling behind; the team's work would go down the drain, the prize money would dry up, as would the sponsor money.

The team were depending on her doing well. All those team members, from Bartley to Nigel to Euphemia to the hundreds of engineers and mechanics and design teams. Each one, their employment was contingent on Kallen's performance, they could hardly pilot the car by remote control.

She was letting them down. They had staked so much in her, and she wasn't keeping up her end.

Her. They had staked so much into Kallen. They had built a car around her, her dimensions, to fit her height and frame, but also the way she drove, or at least inasmuch as she was able to communicate to them. The car was tailor made for Kallen Kōzuki.

Kallen Kōzuki, the person, Kallen Kōzuki, the style of driving. Kasumi had said that underperformance was not a personal failing, but Kallen, while appreciating the message, was unconvinced. Kallen had wrapped so much of herself into what gave her joy, what sparked her up, what got her going, her racing. Going fast, feeling on the limits of grip, feeling the slip as the steering lightened and the slightest movement could send everything spiralling into disaster, as she battled and fought against the best that had ever been that kept her pushing, reaching new heights.

Insofar as this desire, this lust for speed, could be said to constitute the entirety of who Kallen was, the entirety of Kallen's internal compass, then she was not so sure that her failing, her falling behind, could be described as not "reflecting on her", as if the concept of "her" did not consist in large part of this ability and this drive. It had practically grown inside her like a parasite to its host, making her decisions, even to the detriment of others, like at Brazil last year. The Brazil that lived forever.

What was she beyond this mental drive to go hell for leather down a racetrack?

"Mum…"

Who was Kallen Kōzuki? Where had she gone?

"Why did you leave us?"

But there was a way to find her. In her roots. Where had Kallen come from? Where had the story started? Kaori, Takeshi, Yoshio, Hisao, who were they? Perhaps, Kallen wondered, there could be some answer there.

But there was still one thing Kasumi had to answer for. What had led to Kasumi sending them away? Kallen couldn't go further, not in light of Naoto's fury.

Kasumi withdrew somewhat, looking down and taking a moment to find her words, hesitating.

"I wasn't… we weren't really in the sort of position… Naoto was going out racing, every weekend, I thought we wouldn't be able to keep up paying for that, he was able to take back some prize money but it wasn't consistent, it varied by his performances."

Kallen looked down. Naoto's racing was hardly free, and they were hardly flush with money, but that was hardly a reason for exiling them. Disciplining, perhaps, but something else must have happened.

"But he had been doing that for a few months, when Naoto met me and…" Kallen replied, tailing off before recounting what Naoto had said that day in 2010, how he had wept as he tried to get the words out, pushing that aside, and trying to pursue an answer, asked again "What changed your mind?"

"I d…" Kasumi began, before shaking her head. "It was stupid, it was…"

Sighing, Kallen, in more simple terms, asked a third time "Why didn't you come back?"

Kasumi shook her head, beginning "I was scared, we weren't in the sort of place to sustain that… your father had left, racing wasn't a guaranteed income at that time… and Naoto pressed me, he…"

Kallen frowned. Now things were beginning to make less sense, scared? Naoto pressed her? What was going on?

"Why now?" she asked, deciding to start with first things first, with a new curiousity. "Why come back now?"

"Do you think it got any easier, when you left?" Kasumi replied. "I told Naoto to leave, if he thought he could do it without me, I didn't say… I still loved you Kallen, it was just…"

She shook her head, before the older Kōzuki drew a breath and explaining "We were under so much pressure, as a family, and Naoto insisted on making things… difficult, stubborn… but he always has been. I guess it's part of the reason he has done so well living alone, but we… didn't need that, at that time. At that time it wasn't helpful, for him to be…"

Kasumi paused, mulling over her words carefully. Kallen, not used to hearing much critique of Naoto that did not derive from his more self-sacrificial instincts, and certainly not an apparent selfish side, sat, enraptured.

"Stubborn, prideful..." Kasumi finally decided. "Deru kugi wa utareru. That was my concern. We didn't need that sort of trouble at the time, not when we were alone, in the situation we were in, and him going and…"

Kallen's eyebrows shot up. She knew the expression, however was uncertain how it related to Naoto, someone who, while stubborn and fiercely independent, had not ever been abnormally braggadocious or ostentatious or even that conspicuous. The phrase could much more easily be applied as a critique of Kallen, and perhaps correctly so.

What did Kallen not know about Naoto?

"We just…" Kasumi continued, hesitatingly, "We did not have a great income at the time, and Naoto… was getting more and more assertive. As far as I knew, motorsports was not a way to make money, only to waste it. I was fine with it, it was his hobby, but… more and more, he was getting pushy, insisting that he knew what was best, insisting that he knew more than me about how to run the house. He was seventeen! He should have been studying, but… he was insistent, and he pressed the issue, one day, he made an ultimatum, and.. I said he could go. I didn't know he would take you with him, I would have never…"

Kallen, seeing Kasumi tear up, rushed in, to reassure her "It's okay… It's okay… I'm back, I'm back."

But Kallen was thinking. What had Naoto done? Deru kugi wa utareru. The nail that sticks up is struck. Tall poppy syndrome. Certainly, a racing driver stuck up more than an accountant, but Kallen felt an undercurrent of there being something beyond.

All she had ever heard was Naoto's telling of the story, a telling where the announcement was sudden and shocking. He had never, even when pushed, gone into why she had done it, he had withdrawn, grown sensitive and unresponsive, which left Kallen feeling bad for having started the conversation, and she had always left it there. Naoto had always been kind and hardworking, why would Kallen think to dig deeper? He always had Kallen's interests in mind...

But with Kasumi saying that she would have eagerly taken Kallen, and that Naoto had been applying more and more pressure to her, presumably to let Naoto invest more and more of the families income into motorsports to try and get out more of a return. Kallen now knew that she could make a living out of racing, but that was only due to being lucky enough to have become well known enough to get enough sponsorship to make that sort of career a sustainable enterprise, and that was leaving aside the skill necessary to even get a chance. It was only the most reasonable thing in the world to be wary of the idea of going full boar in on betting, in 2010, that Naoto Kōzuki would make it as a successful racing driver, and if he was being increasingly belligerent on insisting that it was his way or the highway...

Kallen knew how stubborn Naoto could be, and could, for as kind as he was, she could easily envision a situation where he had declared he knew better. He had "known better" in falling on his sword at Rebellion, against any sort of competitive instinct, and he may well have "known better" with Kasumi.

This did not make her feel any better, even if it did elucidate why Naoto had been as vicious as he had at Bahrain. If he saw Kasumi as someone who was working against their interests, someone who was holding them back, damaging their wellbeing, he would marshal whatever power he could to diminish them.


	10. The Magician

"Great podium!"

Naoto nodded cheerily as he clinked his glass of whiskey against Nathan's glass of stout, before they each took a moment to sip at the top rim away and hummed satisfyingly.

The race was long over and the celebrations were winding down as night fell. The debrief had been short; Rebellion was still the third fastest car, they had gotten ahead of one Camelot and one Schwarzenritter with a good strategy of starting on Hard tyres to stay out longer and out of traffic. Not much had been learned, Naoto had earned his twenty-sixth career podium, and the rest of the crew had signed off and gone to the various bars and casinos to get piss drunk.

And as Naoto stood next to his father for the first time in two decades, he could hardly not join in.

"I still can't believe you're back." Naoto spoke, as soon as he completed his swig.

"Of course!" Nathan replied, nodding, before, with more melancholy, adding "I felt awful to leave, and even after I had I was hoping that you could both live happily. I didn't think things could possibly go they way they had, I was stunned when I saw your sister on the television!"

"Sure look." Naoto shrugged. "You couldn't have known what was going to happen, for all anyone knew it was still… it wasn't something I saw coming."

"Mm." Nathan nodded severely, before looking Naoto in the eye. "Still, I'm really proud of you for everything you've done."

Naoto looked down for a moment, waving off the compliment. "I did what I needed to do to survive."

"Now." Nathan began, suddenly. "You've been very busy over the last few days, we had a bit to catch up but you've been neck deep in it for most of the time. So."

Blinking, Naoto turned his head on his side and asked "So?"

"I want to know who my son is." Nathan explained. "I've missed out on so much… and… I want to get caught up. You've lived an immensely fascinating life already, you make it under your own steam to Formula One, you break both ankles in a crash, and you have the grit to make a comeback two years later… "

Nathan paused, taking a breath, before concluding "That sounds like a brilliant, fascinating person. I want to get to know that person. What have you been up to personally, do you have any hobbies, perhaps a girlfriend?"

A g-

Naoto stopped, before, hesitantly, chuckling and quickly shaking his head, to Nathans surprise.

"Really? Dashing lad like you, professional racing driver, the ladies must throw themselves at you?"

"Hardly." Naoto shook his head. "With a face like this? As if."

Nathan shrugged, and added "Even with the burn, there's some of the rugged appeal. I'd hope you're giving yourself time to let the pressure off, regardless."

Naoto was aloof. He had never contemplated time off in any serious way, he was too intense to. You couldn't be a racing driver without having intense tunnel vision to some extent, and while Naoto was easygoing as they went, he knew how much work he had put in to get here, with "here" being the reward.

But how much of that could he say. How much of it did he want Nathan to know.

What kind of Naoto did Nathan want to see, hope to see in him? How could he not disappoint that, ruin their new relationship before it started? What was Nathan looking to find, how could Naoto summon it, anything Nathan wanted to see other than the real Naoto, repulsive as that was. Anything.

Anything, except that which would make him unloveable. Scrape those parts away, or risk losing Nathan for good.

Sighing, he dismissively chuckled "It's the cost of jetting across the globe like some suave gentleman racer, hardly the time to settle down."

Nathan smirked, confirming "No doubt."

"Surprised you found the time." Naoto mentioned offhandedly, briefly casting his eyes up and down his fathers dress, taking in the tuxedo up to the nines, before sarcastically adding "What with your whole James Bond routine hopping around the globe on behalf of her Majesty."

"You flatter me." Nathan chuckled. "I was closer to Mr Dryden than double-oh-seven. Filing, mostly. Looked much more adventurous on paper than it turned out."

Naoto would have asked more, however he was interrupted by an approaching attendant, who asked "Can I fancy you gentlemen in a game?"

"Oh no, no thank you." Naoto spoke, waving away the possibility. "I don't gamble, I've likely used up all my luck for the next hundred years."

"Oh come on now." Nathan protested.

"I drive hundred million quid cars around glitzy racetracks and I'm one of the twenty best people in the world at it." Naoto replied, matter of factly. "Don't want to push it, I'm still paying back a hefty debt to fukurokuju."

Nathan turned his head slyly and cheekily rebuked "Gambler's fallacy."

"The odds of the next hand isn't influenced by previous hand. A fallacy that deceives gamblers into continuing to bet again and again on the back of a good streak." Naoto nodded, straightforwardly outlining his understanding of the concept, acknowledging that his superstition was a bit ridiculous. He had been incredibly lucky, but that didn't mean he couldn't be lucky again. He affirmed by elaborating what Nathan likely meant.

"Or, in this context, the opposite. This good luck can't last, cash out while I'm ahead."

Nodding, Nathan acknowledged "Very good."

Curious, Naoto asked "So you play?"

"Got banned from six of the biggest casinos in Vegas over one weekend of Blackjack for card counting." Nathan boasted. "Word spread around the Strip, so now I'm probably banned from more, but I was a good blackjack player."

Naoto blinked, amazed. He couldn't imagine doing that, having the confidence to go from casino to casino, fleecing them all in succession and taking refuge in the audacity of the whole thing. His fathers quick demeanour and quicker wit wasn't just for show, it seemed; he really radiated confidence.

Naoto looked down, and hid a sigh. He was fast, but his father, like Kallen, had something more that he didn't. Kallen and Nathan had boldness, nerve, and immense strength of will. Naoto was amicable, but he was introverted, content to be left alone and work quietly at whatever he was doing. He was no showman, in an industry that was as much about branding, promotions and entertainment as entertainment. It was just as well he was quick in a car.

But what was the risk? It was just a game.

And why mess up a good thing.

"I'm no good for Blackjack…" Naoto finally said, blandly, before adding, with a note of hope "But I saw a Hanafuda deck back in the shop. Got decent at it back when I was doing my season of regional F3. A hundred Yen per point at the end of the game, and the loser gets the next drink."

"Only a hundred Yen?" Nathan laughed, before shaking his head and nodding "Let's get a table."

"Alright." Naoto nodded, before turning to an attendant, getting their attention and asking "Can we uh, can we get, a table, two player game of Hanafuda Koi Koi? Twelve hands, player with hand advantage deals, wherever's quiet. Cheers."

Hanafuda was a deceptively intricate game of keeping track of card suits and possible combinations. Players would try to match one of the cards in their hand to one on the table by suit, claiming both if it was successful, before drawing a card from the deck and, if it was a match by suit with a table card, they would claim that pair as well. The objective was to build specific combinations for points; if a combination of claimed cards was the same as any designated combination, they could end the hand and claim the points for that combination with a shout of "Agari", or declare Koi Koi and continue to try and improve their combination to one that yielded more points.

Declaring Koi Koi could lead to a huge windfall of multiple Yaku's worth of points combining. It could also lead to defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory, where the opposing player could build and claim a successful Yaku, end the hand for double points, and leave the person who had rejected their combination in pursuit of another with no points for the better.

"You deal." Nathan smiled as they sat at a table opposite each other, before he paused thoughtfully and, with a smirk, asked "Do you suppose I could be a good racing driver?"

Naoto, who was dealing the cards as Nathan asked this question, kept his lips pursed as he focused on shuffling the small, thick cards. Twelve suits of four cards in circulation, with eight communal cards on the table, eight for each players hand, and the rest shuffled into a deck.

How to respond. How to respond normally.

Certainly, there were elements that drew one to pursue a career as a professional motor racer that one did not want to boast about, or wear on ones sleeve, and that might make your father realise that rekindling their relationship with you might be a bad idea.

Mustn't be too off-putting.

"Well…" Naoto began, pausing as he combined the Chrysanthemum Sake Cup in his hand with the Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum on the table, before continuing "You need to start young, first of all."

Nathan chuckled as Naoto drew a plain Chrysanthemum. He then reached for a Pampas Moon to join with his Plain Pampas, acknowledged "Perhaps not."

He drew a second Plain Pampas, and, with no cards in that suit on the table, left it there.

"Furthermore, you need good reflexes, experience, and a good feel for how a car behaves." Naoto explained as he claimed a Plain Maple with a Blue Tanzaku Maple. Draw a Butterfuly Peony, leave it on the table.

Nathan, having paused to reflect on what Naoto had said, added "And no shortage of balls."

"You could say that. Certainly can get hairy." Naoto added fatalistically, watching Nathan put down a dud card, and not draw from the deck. He must not have had something that combined with the Peony. That could well be valuable information. Hiding this realisation, Naoto elaborated "Takes a bit of mental preparation to strap yourself into a big hunk of carbon and chuck it around at a few hundred miles an hour as your day job."

"So which are you?" Nathan asked, as Naoto put down his Plain Wisteria to match the second Plain Wisteria on the table, "Brave, or stupid?"

Looking down for a moment thoughtfully, Naoto silently drew a Blue Tanzaku Peony from the deck, combining with the Butterfly Peony to reveal an Aotan of the three Blue Tanzaku cards he had claimed.

"Lucky." Naoto answered evasively, before nodding. "Agari. Five point advantage my way, I deal the next hand."

They had each finished their respective drinks by this point, and as they each were topped up, and a small crowd gathered around them to watch what was to them a peculiar game played between a celebrity and his father.

Pine Crane and Plain Pine to Naoto. Plain Pine claimed on the draw from the deck, didn't match with anything. Blue Tanzaku Peony and Plain Peony to Nathan, claimed a Blue Tanzaku Maple and a Deer Maple on the draw. Holding nothing that could be combined with any table cards, and wary of giving Nathan, who was clearly lining up an Aotan, the advantage of a card on the table that was the same suit as the missing Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum, Naoto held onto his Plain Chrysanthemum and discarded his Cuckoo Wisteria onto the table, drawing back a plain Moon.

However, Nathan, not hiding his intentions, placed down a Sake Cup Chrysanthemum. However, it didn't match with any table cards, and as such he had to be satisfied by claiming a plain Rose, which similarly did not pair. Naoto, seeing an opportunity to halt Nathans plans, took some pleasure in claiming his fathers Sake Cup with the Plain Chrysanthemum he had held back.

Undeterred, Nathan claimed a table Red Poem Tanzaku Cherry with a Curtain Cherry, and, on the draw, came the Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum, unmatched, and so left to the table.

Naoto frowned. Nathan could make an Aotan at this rate. If Naoto was able to claim the open Chrysanthemum he could cut his father off from that Yaku, but he didn't have any cards to try and do it. He was left to claim a Plain Paulownia with another Plain Paulownia and getting a draw from the deck. Unfortunately, the fourth and final Chrysanthemum remained hidden, as he drew an Iris Bridge, which did not match with any table cards.

But what were the odds? Two Chrysanthemum were in Naoto's hand, one was on the table, there was only one left, presumably somewhere in the deck. One in seven chance that the missing card was in Nathan's hand, and one in twenty that it was the next card out of the deck.

Little bit under a twenty percent chance. There was no way.

Nathan swooped in and claimed the Bridge with a Plain card of the same suit, and, from the deck, drew, what else? That last Plain Chrysanthemum, to match with the table Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum, the lucky bastard.

Odds like that, and he still took the chance.

Reckless. Careless.

Irritated with his father's aggressive play and risk taking being rewarded, but not wanting to make a show of it, Naoto reluctantly called "Aotan."

"Koi Koi."

Again? Naoto shook his head, slightly, just so that it could not be seen. Nathan was playing greedy, but if Naoto could form a Yaku, then maybe he could…

Gritting his teeth, Naoto used a Moon Pampas to claim a Table Pampas, but all he drew as his reward was a Plain Wisteria, left on the table.

Nathan claimed a table Plain Plum with a Red Poem Tanzaku Plum from his hand, securing himself another Yaku, and for his trouble, a Plain Pine, left on the table. As soon as Nathan was finished his draw, Naoto declared the Yaku.

"Tanzaku."

"Koi Koi."

Naoto blinked. Nathan had a good set of three blue ribbons, plus an additional Yaku of five ribbons of mixed style. But he was still trying to improve that, still doubling down, still raising his bet.

And who was Naoto to reject all these second chances?

However, his Phoenix Paulownia that he put down only yielded a Plain Paulownia, with a Plain Maple came up without any partner on the draw. And, to Naoto's despair, Nathan revealed a Red Poem Tanzaku Pine to match the Plain Pine he had brought to the table on his previous deck draw.

Sighing, Naoto declared "Akatan, Aotan no Chōfuku."

"Agari." Nathan smirked, triumphantly over his domineering Yaku. "Ten points doubled over seven makes it twenty points, advantage fifteen my way."

Naoto nodded, replying with some irritation "Yeah, I know."

The pilot, now badly down in points and needing to stem the tide, played conservatively over the third and fourth hands, trying to scrape back some of the points lost to Nathan's twenty point coup by holding as soon as he had a Yaku, taking no risks. A Tsukimi-zake was followed by a Tsukifuda, taking Nathan's advantage from fifteen to ten to six.

On the fifth hand, Naoto claimed a Maple Deer with a Plain Maple, however before he could do anything with it, Nathan had accumulated a Moon Pampas, a Cherry Curtain, and an Iris Bridge, boldly placing bright cards onto the table with no matching card and relying on the chance of being able to recover them in the next turn, either by placing down a card of similar suit from his hand or in the deck draw. Sure enough, three brights came soon enough, in spite of the risk Nathan took leaving valuable cards on the table.

"Sankō."

"Koi Koi."

Naoto pursed his lips. He was beginning to work out his father, and how he played cards. Nathan was drawn like a magpie to big, blowout Yaku, winning huge yield hands in a dramatic campaign of shock and awe. In one part of his mind, Naoto was put off by the lack of discipline it displayed, but at the same time, he could not help but admire the nerve it displayed to take those risks round after round and never blink.

He was showing himself in how he played.

Thoughtfully, eyeing up his opposing player, the pilot claimed a Plain Lespedeza with a Boar he had been holding, however, as he drew the Swallow Willow, he was forced to leave it on the table, with no card to pair it with. Nathan, with the eyes of a hawk, immediately claimed it with a Rainman.

"Ame-Shikō."

An eight point Yaku. It would double to sixteen, as it was above seven points. But Naoto suspected what Nathan, who likely saw a greater prize down the river, would ultimately do.

"Koi Koi."

Nathan was going for a Gokō. Five suits of bright cards. The highest point Yaku you could form, fifteen points that would automatically double to thirty.

Naoto, however, would punish this greed, as he saw the way through.

Boldly, he revealed his hidden ace, a Butterfly Peony. Matching a Blue Tanzaku Peony on the table.

Butterfly, Deer, Boar. Under his fathers nose, he had assembled the three cards necessary for the Yaku that sent Nathan's plans crumbling down.

"Ino-shika-chō." Naoto grinned, triumphantly, as it sank in with onlookers what he had just done. "Agari. Five points opposite a declared Koi Koi doubles to ten, advantage four to me."

He had stopped the bleeding. Now, Naoto was on the counterattack.

Five hands done. The sixth hand of the game was a slow slugfest, with neither player able to build a Yaku until the last card of the hand, with Naoto putting together a Kasu for a single point. The seventh hand was better, with Naoto putting together a Hanami-zake to pull six points ahead, however on the eighth hand Nathan, keeping to his strategy of doubling down on good Yakus, finally built his Gokō for thirty points, giving him a twenty-six point advantage.

Naoto tried to build back some footing on hands nine, and ten, with a Tsukifada and a Sanko Tane combination bringing Nathan's advantage down to sixteen, before Nathan claimed an Ino-shika-chō to bring the score going into the final round to a twenty-one advantage towards Nathan. There was only one way to win from here, short of Naoto earning a Gokō. But Naoto suspected Nathan would unintentionally open the lone door to Naoto's victory.

The last hand dealt a Boar and a Plain Lespedeza, the Rainman, Plain Peonys, Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum, Plain Pine, and a Moon Pampas to the table. Naoto had a Pine Crane, Plain Pampas, Pampas with Geese, a Swallow Willow and a Red Tanzaku Willow, a pair of Plain Cherries, and a Yellow Plain Paulownia.

Naoto paused, and thought. The pilot was twenty-one points in the hole on the last hand, and there was only one Yaku that would earn him that outright. However, claiming a Yaku after your opponent had declared Koi Koi would double your points yield, which meant that if his father had declared Koi Koi, there were now four Yakus that Naoto could claim that would win him the game rather than two.

And Naoto knew his father would declare Koi Koi until he had a great hand.

Naoto began by claiming the Moon Pampas with his Plain Pampas, drawing a Blue Tanzaku Maple, which did not match suits with any table cards and so it was added to the lot. On his first turn, Nathan claimed the new card with a Deer Maple, and built on it by drawing a Plain Chrysanthemum with the Blue Tanzaku Chrysanthemum on the table.

For his second turn, Naoto claimed the Plain Pine with his Pine Crane, and in turn, drew a Phoenix Paulownia, which did not combine and he was thus left to sit unclaimed, however, as the young pilot flickered his eyes down to his hand, he saw a possible Yaku unfolding.

By this point, the crowd had grown larger, intensifying the pressure on the two players. It was as much about who could think clearly in the intensifying atmosphere, however both men were able to maintain their composure.

Nathan, keeping his eyes firmly on the cards, smirked, and claimed the Plain Peony on the table with his own Blue Tanzaku Peony, making a Yaku of three blue ribbons. For as much as it was worth, which didn't seem to be much, Nathan drew a Curtain Cherry from the deck, having to leave it on the table. It didn't matter. Nathan had a Yaku, and could now end the hand and the game on a twenty-two point advantage.

However, as Naoto declared "Aotan.", he wasn't flustered. He knew what his father would do.

"Koi Koi."

Naoto released a slow breath. He had guessed correctly. He hadn't known his father long, but he was picking up on patterns, patterns that could be exploited. Nathan wouldn't hold until he had the six Tanzaku Yaku.

Naoto's odds of victory, in that moment, multiplied by four.

The pilot finished his whiskey before drawing his yellow Plain Paulownia to match the Pheonix Paulownia on the table, claiming both and paused for a moment before he moved to draw a new card from the deck.

Pine Crane, Moon Pampas, Phoenix Paulownia. Sanko. It was good, but it wasn't enough. It would only earn him ten points out of the twenty-one he needed. He needed more. there was one card that would take him over the edge. He just needed one card.

Naoto took a shallow breath, and, as the whole room held its breath, drew. Red Cherry Tanzaku. Matching the Curtain Cherry on the table.

Curtain Cherry, Pine Crane, Moon Pampas, Phoenix Paulownia. The four brights.

"Shikō, eight points, Agari." Naoto declared quietly, but forcefully, finally swallowing in a deep gulp of air, realising he had been short of it. "Yaku against an opposing Koi Koi and exceeding seven points multiplies by four to thirty-two points. From twenty-one down, the hand ends with an eleven point advantage. The twelfth hand is concluded, and the game is over."

Naoto leaned back and smiled smugly as he caught his breath. He had done it, he had. He had held his nerve, he hadn't cracked, and he'd stuck to the plan. Twelve rounds, the pressure built up, and it had released in a single draw.

Meanwhile, Nathan just looked at the table, for a moment. Naoto watched, fascinated, as his father digested what had just happened. As the Scotsman's eyes ran over the table, the picture of Nathan Stadtfeld, in the eyes of his bastard son, became more and more clearly defined.

"Good game." Nathan said finally, having finished his analysis. "You played interestingly. Focused on winning above all else, you've got some fantastic nerve, didn't blink. You played very tight though."

Frowning, Naoto raised his eyebrow and asked "What do you mean?"

"Poker term." Nathan explained. "Bite and hold. Never too many big plays, only go in hard on hands you're positive you can win. Minimise risk, minimise loss."

Naoto winced. It was very familiar, the sensation of being known, of being examined critically. He was suddenly intensely and fiercely aware of himself and all his weaknesses as he was under the red hot microscope. Yes, he was overly cautious, too anxious, afraid, yes all these things rose to light like cream floating to surface in milk.

Did he deserve this? He had done his best. He had done what he had authentically felt was right, he had gone without any support for years. Was he wrong to want affection unconditionally, without some undeniably accurate scrutiny of his soul?

Was it wrong to want to some safe harbour in a comforting figure, after so long? The joy and warmth of companionship without the terrifying, unapologizing reality of being, in your whole, known, with all the flaws and, more importantly, all the ugliness and cowardice they reflected on your person. Was it wrong to want something more simple, where there was the comfort offered by Nathan, and what he represented, without the risk of rejection that having his life and person put up for examination offered.

How typical of him to want reward without risk.

Turning his head away slightly, Naoto asked "Something wrong with that?"

"No, 'course not. You don't lose very much money playing tight." Nathan shrugged. "But you'd be pretty easy to bluff if we were playing a game where that mattered. Anyone makes any sort of noise that they have a better hand than you and you'd be sweating. Same time, they also know that you're not likely to be bluffing, as the only time you'd enter a hand would be if you had an overwhelmingly good one, because they know you play tight, and don't like to take risks."

Sceptical as to whether this was as much of a compliment as Nathan seemed to be making it out to be, Naoto simply furrowed his brows and noised "Mm hm."

"Takes discipline to do that." Nathan reassured, however, after a moment, he frowned, and commented "Don't like risk, can tell that much from you."

Naoto frowned. Perhaps it was something about the way it was phrased, but instinctively, Naoto grew defensive, scoffing "Mm. Mm mm. Well… if you're conducting something of an… examination, of me, I can say that I've been conducting some… study of my own."

Amused, Nathan backed off, sounding "Oooaahhh… well, I would be fascinated to hear it."

"You're confident to a fault." Naoto stated, bluntly, before continuing "You eyed up high yield Yaku and chased them, risking a safe lead for a huge one, without even blinking, without giving it a second thought. Throughout that game, you had several moments, the fifth hand, the last hand, where you had a good hand and could simply settle. That last hand, you knew if you just held, you would win on points, but you took the unnecessary risk, the completely needless risk. But that wasn't enough, you always, all through that game, wanted more, wanted to win by twenty, twenty five points, dramatically, rather than just take a guaranteed win by a few points. You don't settle until you're satisfied."

"And what's your conclusion?"

Naoto blinked "Huh?"

"Do you approve?"

Naoto looked aside. He wasn't, in truth sure.

His experiences made him averse to that sort of risky behaviour; he lived in a sort of pathological, reactive fear of losing everything, losing his seat, losing the flat, losing his means of surviving, losing everything he had built, that deep inside him had become ingrained a deep caution.

And so, his fathers belligerence, confidence that almost resembled recklessness, did strike a chord of irritation within Naoto, however as he reflected, let the note reverberate, he realised he was as much looking at Nathan in admiration as frustration.

Naoto was not his father. He was not suave, or cool, as much as he tried to play it. Half of his face looked like a burned rasher. He certainly did not have his fathers sheer, unflinching confidence or self-assurance. And it seemed to be working for him; the tuxedo didn't seem to be cheap, and it was matched by all the appropriate cuffs and watches. As he contemplated, Nathan really was the person Naoto, even if he had not known it, wanted to be; effortlessly sharp and fashionable, successful, and above all, secure.

Security. Naoto, after Kasumi had thrown them out, had been trying to find it, internalised it as the end goal, to the point where he pathologically chased stability, even to where it brought harm to him. He could take it, so long as he knew he would be safe.

Nathan seemed to embody a whole different world, a world that offered something more. Naoto, after thinking, finally spoke, spoke to what set Nathan apart.

"From everything I can tell about you, I'm not sure your behaviour is contingent in my approval."

And that was it. He didn't need to put up with the will of others to succeed. He was not so bound.

Nathan chuckled, before shaking his head and conceding "You're good.", before taking a moment and nodding "You'd fit in very well with the family back home in Aberdeen."

Looking up, Naoto asked "Really?"

"Certain." Nathan nodded, proudly. "Sharp as a whip, thoughtful, well spoken, and a certified badass."

Naoto Stadtfeld. He had never thought about it like that. Since Kasumi had left, Naoto had always felt, on some level, an alienation. He was always the outsider, the stranger, never quite belonging, accepted only conditionally. In his first go at Rebellion, he had been accepted for so long as he served Tohdoh, and in his second, he had had to fight or his chances. He had a place he could all home, but only one person he could call family. Rebellion and Suzaku was getting closer, but this did not compare.

Naoto was worthy of it. He realised, suddenly. He wasn't in this place out of some place of undeserving; everyone deserved support structures. Kasumi had made plain that none was to be found in Hokkaido, however there was another. One that gave a sense of belonging, acceptance, one that Naoto, through silently gritted teeth, forced himself to acknowledge that he deserved it.

And that wasn't too bad now, was it.


	11. Transcendant Idealism

Lelouch only caught his breath once he was out of the Principality of Monaco.

Ending the convulsive hyperventilations while in the Princedom itself was out of the question, as Lelouch rocked his big bottle of fizzing champagne alongside Li Xingke, who after years of trying had finally won the Monaco Grand Prix, the crown jewel of open wheel racing. While Li couldn't keep his energy up for a prolonged celebration, the team was going nuts. It was the same team that, in the year Lelouch took his storybook home win, had been denied victory at this same track with Suzaku due to a fluffed pitstop. Now, under new ownership, they finally grasped the one that had got away, just as Xingke grasped his missing ring from last year, when Kallen had dramatically outmanoeuvred him.

However Kallen did not have the pace to match Xingke that day, and with a little dash of Le Mans tactics, they had managed to get their pilot out into clean air, with enough tyre life to extend a gap far enough to pit and retain the lead without needing to stretch.

Almost as a means of ensuring the excitement didn't fry the teams brains, Lelouch had them leave Monaco and return to France, which was in a decidedly lower state of jubilant explosion, before hastily arranging the journey to Austria, having everyone ship out in a series of lorries, rushing across the Franco-Swiss border in the dead of night to try and let everyone cool off. It had been a challenge to corralle a group of people that were sober enough to drive, had valid French licenses, and could each be assigned to one of the trucks that needed transporting.

Even if Lelouch had to go through every single one, lorry by lorry, to get it organised.

"Alright, you're all good to go. Hand… hang on, let me just… hand these papers, pages one to seven, to the person at the gate of the track." Lelouch panted, as he filed through the sheets in his hand. "They'll keep those. Get them separately to stamp page eight, take it back, and bring it to the infield and hand it to whoever's in charge of our parking space. You should have gotten a call by this point as to which lot we've been given by the drivers ahead. Pages nine and ten are for you and…"

Lelouch paused, to catch his breath, before grabbing onto the open window frame and pulling himself up level with the cabin, and pointing with the handful of papers over at the passenger, "You. File your driving hours, be sure to change over before you leave Switzerland, or else you'll be in trouble with the Austrian government for driving too long. That's you."

He handed the papers across, hopped off, slapped the side of the lorry with his good hand and shouted "Alright, you're off!"

The lorry dutifully pulled away, as Lelouch turned back to the table with his checklist on it, pinned down with a rock to prevent it flying away in the wind. The parts were on their way, Rolo was getting a ride with his personal trainer, the two cars were each in their own transports, and the crew at large that didn't fit into the equipment were being shuttled across.

He ticked off the last box, and cast his head up, looking down the hill from Sospel. He could see Monaco rom here, cast in brilliant, stunning light, more intense against the black night than the surface of the sun against the inky darkness of space.

He let out a breath, and watched it glisten through the air as a misty cloud, before raising his hand to his head, pressing it against his temple. The ringing was forever.

"Lelouch?"

The Frenchman, trying to hide his pain, turned his head back towards the last man present, Xingke, who had opted to stay behind to rest. Nodding back, his head twisted, he asked "Aye?"

Blinking, the Chinese man asked "Are you okay?"

"Fine." Lelouch replied curtly.

"Do you need any medication or?"

"No, I'm fine." Lelouch hissed. "Just need… a minute."

It had come off with more venom than Lelouch had intended, but the message was clear. Xingke was to be no more burdened with Lelouch's problems than anyone else. They were his fault, and moreover, he could not afford to lean more than he had to.

He had come off pain relief as early as he could in his recovery process to not build up any internal resilience to it, even if it would occasionally, after moments of intensity, leave him clutching his head in agony. The more regular dull, bassy jackhammering focused him, kept his spiteful drive to rise back to success from everything that had happened to him at the front of his mind.

He needed his hate, to keep it pure. This he believed implicitly, that there were irreconcilable enemies in life that would have to be confronted, and that, if it were not Lelouch to do it, who else?

Who else. No one else. No one else could be trusted, it was too important. Lelouch knew what had happened when he had depended on people, whether it was Suzaku, his parents, the only person he could wholly depend on was himself. He had to keep his hate pure.

Even today, he could not lose focus, as he was reminded how quickly it come crashing down.

Today had been one of the best of Lelouch's life, watching his driver take home a victory in Monaco, with perfect pitstops and great teamwork. It had been a perfect race. And here he was, barely able to look at any intense light source, doubled over gravel in a car park.

"Gah…"

Xingke, clearly concerned, nonetheless assured "I'll be inside."

Lelouch could only breathlessly nod as Xingke walked back towards their operations building. He couldn't make the trip tonight any more than Li could.

"We leave tomorrow."

* * *

Lelouch only vomited into the bedside basin twice the next morning, which made it a good start to the day.

He eventually was able to pull his leg brace up his thigh and lock it into his knee, and stand. He tried to stand, but as he tried to lean across, his balance shifted onto his dead ankle, and without any internal orienting sense, he fell over.

He threw up again onto the laminate floor.

With his leg locked into a stood position, he had to yell into the next room to get Xingke to help. Li got him stood, though Lelouch insisted on cleaning the floor himself.

Breakfast, and car. With the morning traffic, it was more efficient to sweep down through Italy than go straight into Switzerland through the night. Out by nine, and onto the motorway.

There was some time quiet, with Lelouch being left to reflect as Xingke threaded the sports car through the Alpine divide. Nice turned to Turin turned to Trento as the day set in, mountains and centuries rolling by. It was, if Lelouch had an ounce of art in his meagre excuse for a soul, very romantic, in the classical sense of the word; the world looked pastel as villages and flowers waved in the pre-noon sundance.

While there were other people on the road, they were in a very definite way apart from the car, occupied by arguments over how many corners Pocono had, whether the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi was a mistake, and the history of international motorsports at large.

The seasons passed around them, the spring dying. Lelouch had always been as suspicious of the charms of the natural world as he was the machinations of others, the hot, ringing sun like an intense fever of alcohol.

Lelouch contemplated. As he chatted idly, he quietly realised how long it had been since he had last been idle. Left to himself, to his own abstract thoughts, unable to make any progress towards his machinations, he nonetheless and irresistibly found himself drawn to it, like a moth to light. Time unused was time wasted, and Lelouch hated waste. Life, as he understood it, was not something to be enjoyed; it was to be organised, to be made efficient, and to be wielded towards a goal.

The toll it took on his mind, on his body, to never sleep with anything less than one eye open, was not important. Life was a race, and Lelouch was in it to win it, for as much as the finish line was anonymous to him.

This was why Lelouch had grown attached to Xingke, he realised. He envied him.

Xingke seemed normal. He wasn't exactly approachable, projecting more of an intimidating aura, but that was just his personality, not some front. At no point did Lelouch feel Xingke was trying to sell him or scam him. Lelouch was not so naïve as to assume Xingke always told him the truth, in fact he was almost certain Xingke was in the process of deceiving him, in some way, about his ambiguous illness, but while he was not always truthful Xingke was always authentic. He had a centre, he had convictions, he had colours that didn't change for the purposes of his convenience or benefit. And Lelouch, the chameleon, could only look on.

He had always written off his own bitterness, his falsity, his self-sabotaging addiction to risk, his hero complex, his deceitfulness, his controlling nature, all of it, as being downstream from his skill, as necessary sacrifices, indivisible and inseperable from himself as Lelouch, the crafty, canny strategist and, until recently, pilot, as if his dexterity and prowess was something that he had traded in his human virtues for in part exchange, as opposed to something he could work to resolve.

And it was a useful deception, to keep Lelouch focused on his external objectives, clasping onto them like brittle sticks in an Arctic wasteland to try and build a hut. A helpful fiction, but a fiction broken by Xingke, on that stupidly hot day in late May.

Xingke was every bit as smart as Lelouch, every bit as thoughtful and strategic and canny and quick witted, but had none of Lelouch's failings. He had clear stances. He was firm, not susceptible or willing to adapt to social pressures. He was fast. He had integrity. All of Lelouch's virtues, but none of his vices.

Xingke had values, had moral standards that directed what he did and why he did it.

Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason laid out all the conclusions one could reach about the world from intuitive logic, rejecting the application and evidence of the material senses. One of those conclusions was that the soul was a person, essentially that the self was something of fixed, discrete, and spiritually contiguous essential substance, apart from and recognisable in the face of a contrasting world, a fixed point about which one was anchored. The soul was a thing of permanence, subject to a unity of apperception and to which identity and set of characteristics was coupled. It was the narrowest, strictest rational construction of the self.

If this were true, Lelouch wasn't sure that he had a soul, that he existed as something of essence, with any fixed point. There was nothing of permanence or substance to who he was. All of his being was subject to the whim of whoever he thought could help him get whatever he needed. He would become whoever he had to to achieve his goals, such that doubt could reasonably be raised as to whether a spirit so impermanent could be described as a soul, as so described.

Xinkge wasn't like that. Xingke had clear, fixed values and standards which, even if he sometimes fell short of, he would always hold himself to. Xingke had a soul, for all his own scheming. If Xingke could do it, that meant he could. He imagined writing a poem. A poem of farewell and condemnation, a polemic written in bitter blank verse to his loathsome past. He hadn't the craft in him to write it, not yet, but Lelouch was nothing if not adaptable.

Xingke represented a way out of Lelouch's spiteful hate. He represented a better path. With Xingke's mind combined with his affability and attitude, Lelouch no longer had an excuse.

Soft greens and gentle blues. It was like you could sink into it, as Lelouch and Xingke batted back and forward for hours.

These conversations, discussions, and ramblings lasted all the way across Italy, only halting as they thought of something else to do sometime near Milan to occupy their time.

* * *

"Knight to B5."

"Pawn takes Knight."

"Bishop takes Pawn."

Xingke's brow fuzzled as he faced into the road ahead, trying to mentally map the field of play. Lelouch's imaginary Knight had done a good job of clearing open the countryside out on Xingke's imaginary right flank before Xingke could put it down, only for it to be replaced by an imaginary Bishop. Still, a Pawn for a Knight was a good trade, and, as Xingke examined his strategic pieces in his minds eye, Lelouch was as vulnerable as he was.

With that, Xingke finally decided "B8 Knight to D7."

They were playing chess with no pieces and no board in an entirely verbal match, and had been doing so for several miles.

Lelouch paused, head turned slightly away in the passenger seat as he digested Xingke's improved positioning, with his A8 rook now free to roam and with the centre of the field covered now by two knights. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, Lelouch punted, declaring "Castle on the Queenside.", getting his exposed King to safety.

Lelouch wanting to play defensive? Xingke was surprised, but he could only oblige this newfound conservativism. The Chinese pilot's corner rook was free, and who was he to pass up such a valuable asset. After thinking for a moment, Xingke stated "Rook to D8.", not moving his eyes off the road as he imagined a Castle snuggling alongside a King piece, completing the shield protecting it from five directions, with the edge of the imaginary board defending the back three squares to leave it fully surrounded.

"Rook takes Knight."

Xingke's eyebrow raised. A frontal attack straight into the meat of the fortress, without any time to set up. He always knew Lelouch was belligerent, but this was quite something.

Well, one good turn deserved another, as Xingke hadn't moved his Rook in from the corner just for show.

"Rook takes Rook."

"Rook to D1."

Lelouch had said it reflexively, without even a moment to pause. Xingke had to take a moment to think, as he envisioned the hitherto unused Rook in the far corner sliding up, with its sights aimed downrange to avenge its comrade.

His first instinct was to charge with the D7 Rook, however that would put his King in check to the Bishop at B5 that had just taken out his Pawn. He paused, and thought over his options. The issue was that all of his strategic pieces that were not engaged in defence of the King were stuck behind that same barrier.

Although…

"Queen to E6."

An elegant solution to an inelegant problem. In moving the Queen forward, the Bishop at F8 was now free to attack out from its enclosed position, and the Queen now had the six row covered off.

"Bishop takes Rook."

An unfortunate casualty, however he had one card left to play that Lelouch mightn't have expected, a lonely Knight out at F6.

"Knight takes Bishop."

"Queen to B8, check."

Xingke grimaced. He had hoped the threat of the Knight that had taken the Bishop would be enough to put Lelouch off the risk of using his Queen in a bold, do or die attack. But then, this was Lelouch.

Following through on his threat, Xingke declared "Knight takes Queen."

Lelouch's eyebrows immediately rose, as he snapped back "Rook to D8, check, and…"

A pause, and then "I think, mate."

There was another pause, as each player took a moment to take in the field of play, before Xingke, lip bit, nodded frustratedly. "Goddamn bishop."

The B5 Bishop that had taken control of the centre-left of the field, had taken out his pawn and that Xingke had been forced to leave alone, had the King pinned down, left him unable to escape the wrath of the Rook.

"That brings it six to five." Xingke nodded, irritated at his mistake, before, cheekily, asking "'We make it best of thirteen?"

"Sure there's not much else to be doing until we hit Austria." Lelouch shrugged. "You were Black last time, you can start now."

Xingke was about to speak up, declaring a Pawn to E4, however as he paused to look over the dashboard, he noted "We're gonna need to get some fuel."

Off the motorway, down into the A Roads down some way in towards the town, barely a hamlet of a pair of big barnyards, six houses, a train depot, and a petrol station. In the heat of the day, with only carriages visible at rest behind a chain link fence, it looked like the town was abandoned, with only the head of the station attendant, visible through the window above the inside counter, providing evidence of human life.

"One moment-" Xingke began, clambering out of the car before suddenly being gripped with a convulsive fit of hacking coughs as he just put his leg out and held the roof to keep aloft. He lost both, and as his whole body was gripped by violent spasmodic jerks and he fell out to his knees.

He looked at the dusty tarmac. There was blood, wet. It didn't take a detective to work out whose it was.

Trying to divert Lelouch's attention away from what had just happen, Xingke hurried to clear off, barely managing to avoid tripping as he made his way over to the petrol pump. However the subterfuge was unnecessary, as it was just at that moment Lelouch's phone began to ring.

"Ah goddamnit." Lelouch hissed as he looked down, eyeing up the caller, before answering, and beginning disdainfully "What do you want Reuben?"

Reuben Ashford, Xingke acknowledged. Lelouch's former boss, and a man that was in more and more regular communication with the Frenchman as his team, Ashford RT, looked more and more to be in great financial difficulty. Xingke heard some mumbling over the phone, before Lelouch silently swore.

"I'm somewhere in Italy..." Lelouch said down the phone, clearly irritated. "Bolz… something. What do you want?"

Xingke turned, shook his head and grabbed the pump by its neck. How many times was that now, in this month alone? He had lost count, and surely there were more at times when Xingke hadn't been present to hear the phone ring and catch the first few sentences of Lelouch's increasingly exasperated replies to Reuben regaling him with tales of his flirtations with insolvency.

More mumblings from a clearly distressed Ashford, though the words could not be made out.

"I couldn't leave, my head was splitting, I could barely think." Lelouch protested, rubbing his forehead. "Where are you, are you in Austria yet?"

Xingke pulled at the trigger, and the fuel ticker began to rack up.

"Okay… listen, don't…"

Lelouch shifted in his seat uncomfortably, before tilting his head and sighing "Reuben, there's not much more credit I can extend without seriously... no no no."

Ten litres… fifteen litres… counting up to fifty.

"Reuben, no-" Lelouch groaned, before halting, and restarting "Reuben… okay, okay… I understand that your team is… rocky, but you're saying all this to me like you think I can do something about it."

Forty, forty five. The well started gurgling as the tank approached full, and Xingke pulled back. Forty seven litres. As he looked up, and winced at the price of the oil, he fumbled to try and get his wallet as Lelouch continued, getting increasingly agitated as Reuben tried to explain.

"No I can hardly do that, I told you last Friday, I'm already stretched more than an Olympic athlete trying to have this facility in China opened on time."

The site at Jinhua. Xingke had been amazed when he had seen the blueprints, astonished that it could be done without the sovereign wealth of half the world such was its outrageous scale and ambition, he was hardly surprised Lelouch was strapped for cash. It had been done before, it was only perhaps a little bigger than some of the bigger triovals in the Southeastern United States, but it would still be an incredible feat of architecture if it were built.

If it were built. It was being built. Present tense. There was a concerted effort underway right now underway to realise what was Xingke's dream of a track, of a school for local talent to train up at, of facilities that could give a path to young, aspiring pilots to reach global success and realise their dreams. Xingke had wished it, and it was happening.

More inaudible sentences. They were crying now, and the Frenchman in the passenger seat below Xingke sighed loudly.

"You're not wrong but…" Lelouch trailed off, before resolutely shaking his head. "I'd have to… I'd have to stop what I'm doing and basically arrange sponsors on behalf of another team, that's just begging for a company law filing."

The pump had a debit card machine. In, four digits, and processing.

"Listen…" Lelouch grimaced, before sighing and answering "Okay. Okay, listen I'll talk when I arrive in Austria."

Lelouch hung up just as Xingke pulled his card back, and made his way back to the car. The Frenchman, too frustrated to seem to recall in that moment Xingke's moment of letting the masquerade slip, or at least it seemed so, was more occupied with Reuben, a topic the Chinese pilot was ready and willing to humour him on.

"Everything good?"

Lelouch shook his head, for a moment, before catching his breath. Xingke silently took a sigh of relief. Either Lelouch didn't care to enquire about Xingke's coughing at the moment, or he had got away with a close one.

"No, it's fine…" Lelouch groaned. "Reuben reached out, his team is in financial bother, asked me to invest some personal assets. Did what I could, but independent teams don't look to be long for this sport."

Not having much to add, Xingke simply said "Mm."

"I don't have that many assets myself, not anymore after I bought out Schwarzenritter with almost everything I could scrounge together out my life insurance and my civil suit against Kallen, but I tried to put him in touch with people." Lelouch explained. "It's just so frustrating. I just wish there was something I could actually do, I can't stand just sitting here and watching the team shrivel and die. I need to do something. I need to fix this."


	12. Ikigai

With Monaco, the first part of the European leg of the season, over and done, Rebellion made haste to the next stop at the Osterreichring, sandwiched into a valley in the picturesque Styrian mountains. Their journey went perhaps less scenically than Lelouch and Xingke's - just a day of Swiss motorway travel to see them smuggle their two prototypes into the highlands of western Austria.

And the hills were alive, as the mood at Rebellion was burbingly productive. They weren't on the pace as much as Schwarzenritter or Camelot, but for the first time since 2016 the team was running on a more stable base, with both of the drivers on good terms and happy to work together for the good of the team. The whole atmosphere of the place was very positive in spite of their standings

At least, that was very much Naoto's impression. Everyone seemed happy to be going through the work of competing, and had plenty of vigour, few any more than Suzaku, who started the week inviting the team on a marathon of fifty kilometres around the base of Holzlberg, before locking himself in the garage with Rakshata to try and get the car sorted out for the race on Sunday.

Swiping his pass card into the garage, he saw Suzaku crouched down from behind, arms reaching into some manner of suspension assembly, with Rakshata laid down underneath the chassis looking up at where Suzaku was pointing from below. Gingerly, Naoto approached the scene.

"Hey!" he murmured, with a slightly raised tone of voice so as to get their attention. "It's closing up time, everyone's heading back to the hotel. Let's start wrapping up, unless ye want to be locked in."

Suzaku's head rose and turned, acknowledging Naoto, before it nodded glumly, likely having previously fallen foul of labour laws in his attempts to work late into the night in the past.

"Alright." Suzaku replied, somewhat resigned, before he turned back and, with a more happy tone, continuing "Cheers Rakshata, we got a good amount done, very happy."

He drew his hands out from the complex web of springs and rockers, before turning to the table beside him to wash his hands in a basin of white spirits and nodding "We'll look over the suspension geometry tomorrow."

Rakshata slid out from under the car, and smirked as she moved to stand up.

"Nothing but perfection for your highness?" she chuckled, amused at Suzaku's obsessiveness over making sure every smallest bit was working to his satisfaction.

"Ah here." Suzaku protested, somewhat put out. "It's all very romantic to win with a lousy car, but romance doesn't win. No reason to drive with an arbitrary, self-imposed handicap."

"Very good attitude to have." she laughed. "Losing honourably is overrated, eh?"

It was fair, Naoto supposed, with a chuckle. Suzaku's high-strung neuroticism might be exhausting, but it was that sort of attitude, a relentless drive to win that had made Suzaku as successful as he had been, even if there wasn't a direct correlation between effort and aptitude.

"No, don't put words in my mouth." Suzaku noted, objecting to Rakshata's characterisation of his approach. "I want to win, absolutely, but winning through contemptable means is hardly winning. You're competing to see who's the most skilled driver, not who's the best at cheating at the right moment. I want to prove I'm the best, would the best have to cheat?"

Rakshata chortled, chestily commenting "Oh ho. Forgive my slander then."

Suzaku scoffed, but did so with a humour, acknowledging his strict framework. Naoto, looking at his watch, encouraged "C'mon, let's get going."

Suzaku nodded, drying his hands and turning to stand up from his crouch, before he suddenly hissed in pain.

"Caic!" he hoarsely cried, as he very suddenly fell to his knees, with Naoto rushing in to help, grabbing his torso and resting him into a seated position, with Suaku panting in a tight pain for a moment before he could be allowed to try and stand, with Naoto bearing Suzaku's weight.

After lifting his teammate up, the Japanese redhead asked "You alright?"

"Yeah." Suzaku sighed, though a wince. "Just- ah, goddamnit… been crouching for hours, goddamnit, cramps in my legs. Ah…"

Shaking his head, Naoto chuckled "You sure that marathon was a good idea?"

"Piss off."

"There's a good lad." Naoto, ignoring Suzaku's irritation, nodded, smugly taking the jab on the chin. After a moment thinking over the options available to them, given that Suzaku was in no state to drive, Naoto asked "Do you want me to give you a lift back to the hotel?"

Sighing, Suzaku looked down contemplatively before shaking his head and conceding, asking "Would you mind actually?"

With a smile, Naoto affirmed "Not one bit."

Nodding, Suzaku allowed Naoto to hold him up with his arm slung over his teammates shoulder, as Naoto shuffled the 2018 World Champion over to his car and, carefully, allowing him to drop into the passenger seat, ensuring that his muscles weren't further strained. As Naoto stood up and walked round to the drivers side, he asked, absentmindedly, "What were ye up to anyway?"

"Was trying to rig up a new rear shock absorber mounting." Suzaku explained, as he leaned his head up and massaged his leg. "The angle and geometry is all different this year since we've gone for an inboard pull rod to tighten up the rear packaging and get more air to the diffuser. 'Means we have to try and guesstimate the new values for the rear rebound dampings since the pivot isn't pushing through the same arc. I think we've gotten it within a few dozen newton-meters per second."

Naoto opened the door, before remembering what had happened the previous year and laughing "And you've taken into account any possible resurfacing?"

"And the new tyres, cheeky." Suzaku nodded, amused, before asking "You get on well, what were you up to?"

"Spent some time up in the sim, then I filmed some stuff for sponsors, some commercial for motor oil or something." Naoto shrugged, starting the car as he thought through his uneventful day. "Nothing dramatic. A lot of waiting around."

Suzaku nodded with sympathy as Naoto pulled away, flashing his ID to the woman at the gate and making towards the mountains. As they snaked up the ribbon of tarmac, Naoto gave the throttle a poke, and was rewarded with a satisfying bellow, though the acceleration could only have been disappointing. After you'd sat in a Formula One car, everything else lost any sheen it may have had in terms of performance. Nevertheless, while it felt comparably like it was moving in slow motion, the texture of the tarmac through the wheel, the sense of the tyres fluidly transferring their load as the car shuffled from side to side was no less satisfying.

So it was, for about ten minutes of silence, however as they flowed over the crest of the hill down to the team's hold up, Suzaku suddenly started.

"Will you be sticking around the hotel or will you be going out and then coming back?" he asked. "Need to know if I'm to check you in when the roll is called."

"I'm going out once I drop you back." Naoto confirmed, keeping his eyes locked forward as he slowed on the way into the car park up ahead of the hotel. "My dad hasn't been to Austria for years, he wanted to have a dinner out now that he's back in touch."

Suzaku paused, looking down contemplatively, before, not meeting Naoto's look across as soon as the car finally came to a stop, simply murmuring "Ah."

Naoto frowned with concern, before reaching across to place his hand on Suzaku's back and asking "You alright mate?"

"Yeah." Suzaku resolutely gritted, swallowing, and catching his breath. He sighed, before taking several breaths in and out, slowly and assuredly, and finally speaking up, breaking the silence.

"What's he like?" Suzaku asked, before clarifying "Your dad."

Naoto frowned, before mulling it over. He had known the man as an adult for a week now, having not seen him for almost two decades theretofore. It was, effectively, as if Naoto was meeting a whole new person, given the deficit between the places Naoto had been in his life when he had known him. He wasn't sure if Nathan had changed, since he hadn't been mature enough when he had first known him to undertake any rigourous critical analysis of the man, who was he to say the man had or hadn't changed. Had Naoto ever known his father, in the past? Were his childhood memories of a real person?

It couldn't be, not with all the context and the memories of Nathan Naoto had had to cobble into some understanding of his absent father that had all but taken form as life in and of itself. It was like trying to put together what a jigsaw puzzle must look like with only half the pieces. The new meeting and learning about Nathan could not help but contrast with the Nathan that had lived in his head.

How did Naoto feel about the real Nathan? What was the real Nathan?

"I feel…" Naoto slowly contemplated, halting as his thoughts percolated. "As a person? He's… a lot of what I would like to be, he's... who I imagine a more successful version of myself as, without my uncertainties, he's very confident, he's very self-assured. But he's also a bit more… direct, impatient, it's…"

Naoto paused again, before decisively declaring "It's clear."

Suzaku waited, before Naoto explained "There's a rift, we've grown in different ways over time. We can't quite pick up right where we left off, there's a few years of gap to fill in, for both of us. But I think it's worth it."

"Has Kallen seen him?"

Naoto frowned. Of course, Nathan could have gone and seen her on his own initiative, but he would likely have heard about it. He looked down, uncertain.

"I'm not sure, we've not talked. I'm sure she's aware of him by this point." he glumly shrugged. "In that he's hanging around the place, she's just with her mum now, it's…"

Sympathetically, Suzaku asked "Bit of bad blood there?"

Naoto pursed his lips, thinking back to what had happened, before nodding "You could say that."

Not sure what else to add, Suzaku could only look away and murmur "I see."

"What's got you so curious?" asked Naoto, intrgued by Suzaku's interest in his relationship with his father.

Suzaku winced, and Naoto immediately regretted asking the question. He raised his hand to belay the comment, however Suzaku shook his head and, after taking a deep breath, explained.

"It's been a while." Suzaku shivered. "My dad died years ago."

Naoto looked down, and quietly assured "I'm really sorry."

Suzaku shrugged. "Hardly your fault. It's not as if you made him drink that coffee made with the regular milk that did him in with the allergies."

"Still unfortunate." Naoto sighed. "When did that happen?"

"2014."

Naoto grimaced. Suzaku had been left without parents at fourteen. He had barely managed to cope with similar at seventeen, at fourteen he would have been swallowed. Certainly, Genbu's money would have been helpful, but Suzaku's furious drive to continue was not a given after losing the only family he had ever had. Naoto had only carried on because he had to take care of Kallen.

However, Suzaku, after a moment's pause, nodded, and visibly determined to confess, to get what he was feeling out into the open.

"We'd just had a big fight. He'd basically given me an ultimatum to either get serious about getting interested in a career in something proper like banking or business, something worthy of a Kururugi, and stop the racing, or to get out of his house and not come back."

Blinking, stunned, Naoto could only ask, despite himself, "What happened?"

"I hesitated, I stuttered, wasn't certain." Suzaku sighed. "He… shook his head, said he'd give me a week to decide and told me to leave. He said I would need to be stronger, be more serious, if I was to be worthy of even being recognised by him as his son. That was the thing, see. It was all about the family name. If a Kururugi was going to do it, a Kururugi had to be the best to do it, and…"

Suzaku's head finally fell, his grief taking hold as he began to weep.

"He told me, you'll never be the best. You might be good, but you'll never be the best, not the way I was acting then, snivelling and shite. I should stop before I embarrassed the family, the bastard."

Suzaku's tone changed, as his hulking sobs continued to convulse his body the weeps turned from sad sobs to pitches of laughter, drawn out of the lung in harsh, outraged breaths. With each exhale, a belch of a cruel, wheezing, sardonic humour.

"And then the fucker died." Suzaku darkly chuckled. "Hadn't yet changed his will, and it was all left in trust for me, all of it, the houses, the savings, everything, turning over three years ago. All of it."

Naoto looked down in growing horror at what was fast becoming the sadistic glee with which Suzaku was outlining what had happened, barking out spurts of laughter in between his crying. "Everything the family had, for generations, to an embarrassment like me. Can you believe that? Can you think, all that built up wealth, all those generations of fucking people over, can you imagine the looks on their faces if they knew it was all going towards supporting the pathetic career of a little sports fuck?"

Naoto couldn't really reply, not with Suzaku in this mood dark comedic mood. It was likely an amused appreciation of the irony of the situation which Naoto lacked the proximity to recognise, still focused on the morbidness of the whole affair.

"And I do wonder." Suzaku continued, grinning through tears, "In one way I'm always wondering. I was in Germany when I found out, can you believe that? I was in a Formula Renault race in Nurburg. I didn't find out until after the race, can you believe that? Out of the car, pat on the back, here's your trophy, oh and your dad is fucking dead. Congratulations!"

Naoto could only look on as Suzaku cruelly chuckled. He wondered if that was what it was like for Kallen, getting out of her F2 car, being handed the trophy, and being told her older brother, the only person who had stood by her since she was ten, had been injured in an accident that at the time looked as if it was going to end his career.

He could only imagine what it would have been like if he had died. She would still have had the sponsors to allow her to keep her seat, she might have been successful and fought through the loss of him, but he could only imagine the questions that would have gone unanswered, how much she would be looking up and wondering what he would want her to do, much in the same way Suzaku might wonder what his dad would have wanted him to do.

"I wonder if he'd be happy with me." Suzaku pondered in between breaths, mirroring Naoto's own thoughts. "I'm driving with the leading Japanese motorsports brand in the most competitive branch of motorsports, I've won a championship. Would he have changed his mind, would he have said I was enough?"

Naoto exhaled through his cheeks, shaking his head. There was no right answer. There was little that Naoto could say to arrest that anxiety, that Suzaku would only be able to ask a brick wall if he had finally reached a point where his father would change his mind, and agree that the whole endeavour had been worth it, that Suzaku stood at the mountaintop.

But therein lay the problem, didn't it.

"Mate…" Naoto began, trying to be reassuring, "I think, speaking from experience, if he's already putting conditions on his… recognition of you, that he'll only accept you on the condition that you're successful, I don't know how much it's ultimately worth pursuing."

"No, I know." Suzaku nodded, understanding, as he breathlessly let all the liquids in his body out through his eyes. "Doesn't make it any easier though."

"Of course not."

"That's why I have to keep going." Suzaku grimaced, before asking "How long has Nathan been gone, from you?"

"Since 2003. The woman kicked us out six years later."

Suzaku nodded, before adding "Make the most of him. Make sure you spend as much time with him as you can. Make the most of it. I'll call you in on the roll."

Naoto looked down. Suzaku was right.

Nathan had been gone since 2003. Then went by six with Kasumi, and then she had gone too. Naoto had by that point been forced by Kasumi's declining capacity to take a more adult posture within the house, however Kallen was still anonymous to what had been at the time Naoto's growing anxieties about their mother and their ongoing welfare. Naoto couldn't presume her to have imparted all off his knowledge of the context.

He'd do it. After the race, Sunday afternoon, when both of their schedules were cleared, he'd sit down with Kallen and go through everything. Life was too short to play cloak and dagger, and as Suzaku explained his last conversation with his father, Naoto thought back to that night in Bahrain, what he had last said to Kallen.

_"She can piss off. You can hang around her if you fancy, just don't go dragging her around me. She had no interest when we were in hell, I have no interest now. And for fucks sake don't bring her back to the flat, there's plenty less dramatic ways to get me out of the place, if you want it that badly."_

In hindsight, he winced. He wouldn't take back anything he had said, but he had not, in his sudden anger, explained himself. Sunday. It would not be fun, but it was necessary, if he was to try and not let Kallen separate too wholly, to feel as if Naoto had abandoned her. He couldn't do that to her.

Sunday afternoon.

**Author's Note:**

> Kept you waiting huh.
> 
> So good news; this most recent hiatus has not been due to getting brain damage. However, while I had hoped that having to study from home due to Covid would leave more time for writing, second year Law is a hefty ramp up from the first, and that leaves aside all the extracurricular activities I am involved in. I don't want to leave this story be, so I thought that I would, in intervals, publish all that I have right now, which is not everything, however I have a chapter plan and skeleton for the entirety of this story, which spans the 2020 and 2021 seasons. While there will be gaps, I will endeavour to upload as often as I can.
> 
> As always, I love to read reviews and commentary regarding the content. As an aside, this story is a sequel to Oshiyoseru Kōzuki, which I would recommend reading so as to understand this story. The first half of this chapter was a flash forward about a decade, a time period that, while I have planned for, we will not get to in this story. This story will pick up straight from the end of OK.
> 
> That's it from me. Drive safe.
> 
> ~G1ll3s


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